Ken McGoogan

High Commissioner hails How the Scots Invented Canada

2012-01-25T13:50:00.000-08:00

Scotland’s gifts to Canada

January 25, 2012

Robbie Burns statue, Victoria Park in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. The statue was erected by the North British Society of Halifax in 1919. Sculpture by G.A. Lawson.

By Andrew Pocock
January the 25^th is Burns Night, an anniversary globally celebrated. It’s right and proper, therefore, to reflect for a moment on the Scottish contribution to Canada.
I was given a book the other day, modestly titled: How the Scots Invented Canada, by Ken McGoogan.
It points, not without evidence, to the seminal contribution made by Scots to Canada’s exploration, politics, economy, education and literature. It claims that almost 5 million Canadians, a goodly quantum, identify themselves as Scottish. That’s as large as the entire population of Scotland!
Early arrivals included explorers Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser and James Douglas, pushing West and North, giving their names to mighty rivers and trees.
On the east coast, Scots landed at Pictou, and named a new Province: Nova Scotia.
Encouraged by Lord Selkirk and John Galt, thousands of Scots moved to the Maritimes and Upper Canada, in search of wide-open spaces, new lives and opportunities, and as much distance as possible from the Sassenachs.
In their wake came the nation-builders like Donald Smith, George Brown and perhaps the greatest of them all, Glasgow-born John A Macdonald, in whose Ottawa house British High Commissioners have lived for 80 years.
And Scots continued, in modern times, to contribute to Canada’s present and future.
They include the media guru and philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who introduced us to the concept of the global village;
The impassioned writer and naturalist Farley Mowat;
Alice Munro, winner of both the Booker Prize and the Governor-General’s Award;
And those Ken McGoogan calls “hybrid Scots”: including Bill Reid, the Haida-Scottish carver of monumental sculptures; John Diefenbaker, with a German name from his father, but a Scottish Canadian mother, whose destination was “one Canada”; and another Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, also the son of a Scottish Canadian mother. . . .
Let’s raise a dram, for auld lang syne.

Wade Davis tackles Mount Everest

2012-01-14T07:09:00.000-08:00

Our Hero turns up today in the Globe and Mail, lauding the latest book from Wade Davis:

. . . Into the Silence is a complex, subversive work, a postcolonial refashioning of an imperialist adventure. Davis, a Canadian anthropologist and explorer, is rightly celebrated for introducing indigenous perspectives into the mainstream. Here, he continues that work while telling a terrific adventure story and affirming as sublime the hubristic madness of assaulting the highest mountain in the world “because it’s there.”

The familiar mountaineering story, man against nature, is here vividly rendered: the difficult treks to Base Camp, the struggles to locate a feasible route, the debilitating effects of altitude sickness, the cold, the fog, the wind-whipping snow, the frostbite, the avalanches, the slips and the tumbles, and the life-and-death choices that confront climbers at altitudes above 23,000 feet.

Davis paints an engaging portrait of Englishman George Mallory, the greatest mountaineer of the age, who emerges as brave and athletic but profoundly flawed. Probably we did not need to learn so much about his early adventures in homoeroticism. But the most meaningful revisionism here is broader and more political, in that Davis responds to the attitudes outlined in the first paragraph of this review. Specifically, he sets the record straight about two remarkable “colonials” – one Canadian and one Australian – who, in the countless retellings of the initial assaults on Everest, have received nothing like the recognition they deserve. . . . [To continue reading, click on the headline.]

Canadian Voyage Makes History in Greenland

2011-12-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

By Ken McGoogan
(www.travelthruhistory.com)

None of us expected our voyage to make history, not when we boarded the Clipper Adventurer in Kugluktuk (Coppermine), near the west end of the Northwest Passage. True, our cruise was billed as an expeditionary adventure. But we numbered roughly one hundred and twenty, most of us were over sixty, and we were sailing in comfort if not luxury: white linen tablecloths in the dining room, a well-stocked bar in the forward lounge, and a staff of expert presenters that included scientists, Inuit culturalists, and authors Graeme Gibson and Margaret Atwood.

Hundreds of ships had plied these northern waters since the early 1800s, when the British Admiralty began to chart the Arctic archipelago while seeking a trade route across the top of North America. So nobody even dreamed of achieving a first of any kind. We forgot that climate change has made a difference. We did not anticipate that this year, the Arctic would have the second lowest extent of sea ice in recorded history. We did not expect that, according to the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the pack ice would reach its least extent just as we arrived in northwest Greenland.

But on September 10, one day after it did so, we sailed into Rensselaer Bay, where in the mid-1850s, explorer Elisha Kent Kane spent two terrible winters trapped in the ice. And three days after that, as on Day Thirteen of our voyage we approached the island town of Upernavik, I went to the bridge. As the staff historian, I needed to announce the surprising news.

By now, everybody on board knew that we had reached a latitude above 79 degrees. We had achieved a "farthest north" for Adventure Canada, which regularly runs voyages like this one into the Arctic. Everybody knew that, although a number of explorers had travelled by dogsled in this region, very few ships (if any) had entered Rensselaer Bay since 1853, when Kane got trapped there in the Advance. And everybody knew that in 1855 -- decades before Ernest Shackleton made his name with a spectacular, small-boat voyage in the Antarctic -- Kane led sixteen men in an extraordinary, 980-kilometre escape along the Greenland coast. . . .
(To read the rest, click on the headline)

Into the Northwest Passage

2011-12-06T14:20:00.000-08:00

Readers of Fatal Passage may recall that a dozen years ago, with Cameron Treleaven and Louie Kamookak, I erected a plaque honouring Doctor John Rae at the spot where he discovered the final link in the Northwest Passage. This August, I'll be sailing Into the Northwest Passage with Adventure Canada. We are hoping that, for the first time, we will be able to visit that plaque. This will involve finding a landing spot near Point de la Guiche, but I vividly remember that locale and we have our fingers crossed. For details re: this voyage, which has a superb itinerary, click on the headline above. Maybe see you in August!

Online writing through the New York Times

2011-11-08T13:53:00.000-08:00

Anyone looking for an online writing course might want to check out The New York Times Knowledge Network, which is offering The Art of Fact: An Introduction to Writing Nonfiction: January 23 - March 30, 2012
Instructor: Ken McGoogan

The hallmarks of Creative, Literary or Narrative Nonfiction are truth and personal presence. The genre includes subjective and objective streams, and encompasses memoir, autobiography, biography, history, adventure, travel, and true crime. The writer of nonfiction employs memory, imagination, analysis, and research, and adapts literary techniques from fiction, journalism, and the essay. This craft-oriented course aims to enhance your ability to tell true stories. We will explore point of view, scene-making, flashbacks, fast-forwards, fat moments, personal presence, and the rolling now. The instructor will introduce a concept or technique and provide examples and illustrations. Participants will apply that idea in an exercise, and share exercises and assignments through the Discussion Board.

Related Institutions: University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies

Find out more by clicking on our headline.

Scotland's First Minister proves a discerning reader

2011-10-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

Rumour has it that Alex Salmond, an aficionado of the poetry of Robbie Burns, knows a good book when he sees one. As Scotland's First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, he has provided this appreciation of Our Hero's latest book:

"In 'How the Scots Invented Canada', Ken McGoogan has delivered a celebration of the inextricable and treasured ties between our two great nations. His insightful and intelligent portrayal of our shared heritage surely draws its inspiration from the many Scots who have led the way in shaping Canada, from early settlers who carved Nova Scotia from harsh northern lands to Glasgow born Sir John A Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, who united Canada with his national vision and the construction of the world's longest railway.

"In the intimate portrayals of Scots-Canadians past we see the enduring strengths and qualities which have helped make our countries great today. In our world-class education systems, thriving creative industries and cutting edge technology we see Scots on both sides of the Atlantic as diverse, radical and passionate as the first explorers who set foot on Canada's shores hundreds of years ago."

Our Hero reviews the winner of the Weston Prize

2011-10-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

And the winner of the inaugural Writers' Trust Hilary Weston Prize for nonfiction, which is worth $10K more than the Giller, is . . . Charles Foran! The winning book: Mordecai:The Life & Times. Our Hero reviewed the tome in the National Post in October 2010.

Yes, this is it, the definitive biography of Mordecai Richler, one of the greatest role-model writers this country has produced. It reads more like a literary work than a scholarly one, as if flowing naturally from an immersion so deep that no note-taking was required. Yet the book is so detailed, so exhaustive, so astute and authoritative, that one can’t imagine there is anything more to add.

Biographer Charles Foran is a beautiful writer: a stylist. By 1948, he tells us, when Richler was a 17-year-old student at Sir George Williams University, already he was a “heat-seeking teenage journalist.” Within three years, Richler would be in France, working on a first novel called The Rotten People — “a screed cross-eyed with self-absorption and judgmental to the point of being hateful.” A few years later, Foran tells us, Richler would be yearning to resume work on St. Urbain’s Horseman, “a book he had been writing for too long in his head and not long enough in his study.”

So the language sweeps us along. But let’s be clear: This 727-page door-stopper is written for readers who have completed Richler 101. Those who haven’t, and who might welcome a potted biography at this point, should refer to excellent biographies by Michael Posner and Reinhold Kramer.

Mordecai: The Life & Times is a tough-minded book, worthy of its subject. It’s a warts-and-all portrait of the artist as street-fighter: ruthless, committed and lethal when cornered or simply rubbed the wrong way. Of course, the Saidye Bronfman anecdote is here. At the Montreal premiere of the movie version of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, she speaks from on high: “Well, Mordecai, you’ve come a long way for a St. Urbain’s street boy.” Our hero responds: “And you’ve come a long way for a bootlegger’s wife.”

Afterwards, in Foran’s telling, Mordecai’s wife, the long-suffering Florence — a Nora-Joyce figure but with brains and critical acumen — admonishes her husband for speaking to an elderly person in such a manner. One imagines him taking another sip of whisky.

Read the rest by clicking on the title above . . .

Voyage around Scotland means sailing through history

2011-10-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

By Ken McGoogan
Special to the Globe and Mail

So this was Calum Mor's House, the oldest dwelling on the Scottish island of Hirta. According to legend, young Calum had built it in a single day to prove his worth: He had been passed over for the annual fowling expedition to Borera, a smaller island in the group that makes up St. Kilda.

This happened a thousand years ago, and I found my imagination racing. That's what comes of writing historical narratives, as I've been doing for the past dozen years.

I could see it all. The September expedition to Borera, six kilometres away, was the one great adventure of the year. The strongest men would risk their lives paddling through rough seas to harvest hefty birds that had to be killed at night while they slept on slippery ledges. Often, the men would stay a few days on Borera, sheltering in the stone cleits or storage houses they had previously erected. In my mind's eye, I could see the aggrieved Calum Mor building furiously with these heavy stones, bent on showing those who had voted against him that they had been wrong, wrong, wrong.

Later, on reflection, I began to doubt that anyone working alone could erect such a structure in a week, never mind a day. But the details I could tease out later. The racing of the imagination – that is what I seek when I travel, that inspirational revving. I'm a history junkie. In places where history happened, I get excited. And I was finding this voyage through the Scottish Isles almost (but not quite) too stimulating.

This circumnavigation of Scotland was mounted by Adventure Canada. Our home for the 11-day voyage, the 335-foot-long Clipper Odyssey, was rightly billed as a “small luxury ship.” We're talking well-stocked bars and lounges, white-linen tablecloths in the dining rooms, fully equipped presentation rooms, and cabins with portholes or windows.

The vessel carried a full complement of 110 passengers, among them a number of lecturers: authors Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, musician Ian Tamblyn, publisher Douglas Gibson, ornithologist Brent Stephenson, myself and another author-historian, Ted Cowan. Starting from Oban on the west coast, we sailed north to Orkney and Shetland, and then south to disembark at Edinburgh. Once a day, sometimes twice, we would pile into 12-person Zodiacs – inflatable craft with outboard motors – and zoom ashore to explore a different island.

(click on headline/ link to continue)

Time travel . . . around Scotland and through Canada's History

2011-09-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

"Last June, during a voyage around Scotland," the piece begins, "a history-buff friend told me about attending a talk by an academic historian who had written a book featuring a section on the 1758 siege of the Fortress of Louisbourg. My friend noted, with some dismay, that the professional seemed to take pride in the fact that he had never visited the fortress, though he could have gotten there by undertaking a two-day drive." I go on -- for yes, those are indeed my words -- I go on to describe my reaction, and to evoke a fantastic Adventure Canada voyage around Scotland. This column appears in the latest issue of Canada's History, complete with a photo of Our Hero at Lach Finlaggan on the island of Islay. Wasn't that a trip! For good measure, that same issue has a review of How the Scots Invented Canada.

John Rae gains recognition in London

2011-08-29T05:57:00.000-07:00

John Rae has a gained a plaque in London, England.
Friends of the Scottish-Orcadian explorer, who lived in that city from 1869 to 1893, recently mounted an historical plaque on the wall of his long-time home in Addison Gardens. I visited that site while researching Fatal Passage, and I remember feeling outraged that Rae -- arguably the greatest Arctic explorer of them all -- was not commemmorated there.
Obviously, Margaret Street of Edinburgh felt the same way. She launched a campaign to rectify this historical affront. And on June 23, the round blue plaque was publicly unveiled by survival expert and TV presenter Ray Mears. It reads: “John Rae (1813-1893) Arctic explorer lived and died here.”
Situated in the heart of London, the plaque complements the marble memorial in St. Magnus Cathedral in Orkney and the inscribed metal plaque that overlooks Rae Strait in the Canadian Arctic -- the one that, along with Louie Kamookak and Cameron Treleaven, I erected in 1999. It marks the spot where Rae, working for the Hudson’s Bay Company, located the final link in the only Northwest Passage navigable in that period.
The London unveiling, organized by English Heritage, attracted about fifty well-wishers, among them Orcadians James Irvine and David Aggett. Irvine reports that after the brief ceremony “the current residents kindly invited all present to drinks, enabling us to appreciate why Rae would have much enjoyed the delightful large but secluded communal garden to the rear of the property.”

Robbie Burns returns to New Brunswick

2011-08-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

Great news out of New Brunswick. The Scots in those parts are set to unveil a gloriously refurbished Robbie Burns Statue on September 10. Guests will include J.K. and Jean Irving and the lieutenant-governor of the province. There will be a reception and a dinner. There will be singing and sundry pipe bands. Would you believe that I was invited to participate in the festivities? The heart-breaker is that I will be elsewhere. Dagnabit, I spent a year in Fred as writer-in-rez at UNB! True, I will be in the Northwest Passage, which mitigates the pain. Still, I would have loved to attend. Party on, Fred!

Coetzee meets Auster in Kingston, Ontario . . .

2011-07-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

J.M. Coetzee meets Paul Auster at the Kingston WritersFest. Wowsers! When a two-time Booker Prize winner originally from South Africa chats on stage with an eminent American fabulist, well, you know have a capital-E Event. Make that an all-caps occasion: an EVENT. This "international marquee" extravaganza kicks off the Kingston festival on September 24. And that, as they say, is just the beginning. The line-up for this four-day festival includes Noah Richler, Linwood Barclay, Andrew Pyper, Frances Itani, Diane Schoemperlen, Romeo Dallaire, Kenneth J. Harvey, Merilyn Simonds, Trevor Ferguson, Sarah MacLachlan, Richard Gwyn, Vincent Lam, Dave Bidini, Robert J. Sawyer . . . and, oh look, yours truly. I'll lead a panel discussion called Great Scots! and teach a master class in Writing the Past. Click the headline above and check it out.

Mount McGoogan Conquered!!!

2011-06-22T03:13:00.000-07:00

The deed is done, the mission accomplished. Mount McGoogan is conquered. The date: June 15, 2011. Those who have read How the Scots Invented Canada will know that my last expedition was thwarted by my Canadian deference to a sign warning that unauthorized persons should proceed no farther. Yes, I attempted a different route and got turned back by a rushing river. This time out, understanding that my surname conferred the requisite authorization, I climbed over the gate and, with Sheena, followed a dirt road as it zig-zagged upwards to the top of Cruach Mhic Gougain (higher, at 246 metres, than Montreal's Mount Royal). The big surprise? The standing stone we found near the top. It marks the spot, I believe, where a lookout would light a beacon fire to relay news of any imminent invasion. We had neglected to bring champagne. The celebration would have to wait. Now, we unfurled a flag and marked the occasion by signing two copies of How the Scots.

Birthday poem sparks controversy at Writers' Union AGM

2011-05-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

Controversy erupted Saturday at the annual general meeting of The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) when members were urged to seek the attention of book clubs and reading groups with a bad poem. The motion that sparked a spirited debate was the second of two involving Canada’s Public Lending Right Program (PLR), which reimburses authors for the presence of their books in libraries.
The first PLR motion, decidedly serious in tone, noted that digitization is revolutionizing the world of books, and urged the federal government “to demonstrate its commitment to Canadian culture by providing funds to enable the PLR Program to include eBooks.” The PLR Commission, which is co-sponsoring a study of eBooks and libraries, was a main focus of the four-day gathering.
The second motion, noting that the PLR Program is celebrating its 25th anniversary, called on TWUC to urge book clubs and reading groups to open each meeting with a solemn reading of the following poem:

Happy Birthday, PLR!
We borrow books and, yes, you are
The way we show appreciation
To the authors of our Nation.

The nay-sayers argued that the poem is so awful that TWUC could not endorse it. But David Waltner-Toews – who presented the motion while disavowing authorship of the poem – argued that the badness of the poem was necessary: “If it was a serious poem,” he said, “there would be no joke. These people have no sense of humour!”
The nay-sayers carried the day by four votes – the narrowest margin of the afternoon. One GG-award-winning novelist hollered for a recount, and a nonfiction prize-winner muttered darkly about revisiting the matter next year. The author of the poem has yet to admit he wrote it. But he does believe strongly that book clubs and reading groups should solemnly intone the poem when they gather, even without official endorsement.

The Tribe Invites You to Party at the Toronto Public Library

2011-05-26T03:03:00.000-07:00

It did not officially launch the annual general meeting of The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC). But last night’s Toronto event, a literary cabaret mounted by the Creative Nonfiction Collective, drew a star-studded, standing-room-only crowd to Harbord House. This preliminary event left no doubt whatsoever: The Tribe is gathering in force at the Centre of the Universe.
Some 150 writers from across Canada, all with at least one published book to their credit, will participate in TWUC events over the next four days. Tonight, May 26, is the official launch – an open-to-the-public celebration of the 25th anniversary of Canada’s Public Lending Right Program. That happens in the splendid Appel Salon at the Toronto Public Library, Yonge and Bloor, starting at 7 p.m. Admission is free, and you can reserve tickets here: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/programs-and-classes/appel-salon/
Did I mention that last night's cabaret was standing-room-only? Performers included Maggie Siggins, Merilyn Simonds, Wayne Grady, Marni Jackson, Don Gillmor, Rosemary Sullivan, Anthony Westoll, and Yours Truly. But the real story, and the hint of things to come, was the audience. It included Toronto writers Susan Crean, Erna Paris, Leon Rooke, Christopher Moore, James Adams, Ted Barris, and Brian Fawcett, as well as Albertans Brian Brennan and Myrna Kostash, and from British Columbia, Rhona MacAdam, Michael Elcock and Andreas Schroeder. OK, I’ve missed people -- for example, Trevor Ferguson (Montreal) and Susan Olding (Kingston). But you get the idea. Maybe see you tonight, when Schroeder tells The Untold Story of Canada’s PLR Program? Oh, yes, a cash-bar reception will follow.

The Tribe gathers to celebrate PLR

2011-05-20T03:23:00.000-07:00

That's how Margaret Laurence would have described it -- as a gathering of The Tribe.

Scores of Canadian authors are heading to Toronto from across the country for the annual general meeting and conference of the Writers’ Union of Canada.

The May 26 kick-off event, which is open to the public, celebrates the 25^th anniversary of Canada’s Public Lending Right Program. The prolific Andreas Schroeder, one of the founding fathers, will fly in from British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast to deliver a keynote address: The Untold Story of Canada’s PLR.

Speakers will include Anna Porter, whose book The Ghosts of Europe recently won the 2011 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize.

At the reception afterwards, those in attendance will rub shoulders with dozens of authors, among them Susan Swan, Margaret Atwood, Katherine Govier, Merilyn Simonds, Wayne Grady, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Graeme Gibson, Lee Gowan, Greg Hollingshead, Brian Brennan, Judy Fong Bates, Alan Cumyn, and yours truly.

This free event happens in the Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library, Yonge and Bloor, starting at 7 p.m. Be there, as they say, or be square.

Expedition to Mount McGoogan

2011-05-09T04:51:00.000-07:00

A couple of years back, Our Hero led a two-person expedition in an attempt to climb Mount McGoogan (Cruach Mhic Gougain) in Kintyre, Scotland. On that occasion, he failed -- a story he tells in the epilogue to How the Scots Invented Canada. Late next month, after voyaging around Scotland with Adventure Canada, Ken will return to Kintyre to try again. This time, he will lead a four-person expedition in an effort to conquer the 246-metre cruach. "Last time out, I took a crucial wrong turn," he says, looking back. "We got halted by an impassible burn. This time, different route, four people . . . I think we can reach the summit."

The Wicked Need No Rest . . .

2011-04-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

OK, here we go. On May 4, Our Hero addresses the Canadian Celtic Arts Association in downtown Toronto. It's a public event co-sponsored by Celtic Studies, St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and Ken will talk about his book How the Scots Invented Canada. Details: please click here.

On May 25, Ken will read from that same book at a "non-fiction cabaret" called Stranger Than Fiction. That's with several other high-profile writers: Wayne Grady & Merilyn Simons, Don Gillmor, Marni Jackson, Rosemary Sullivan, Andrew Westoll. That's at Harbord House Gastro Pub, 150 Harbord St., Toronto, 8:30 p.m. Details: please click here.

Then, on May 27, three days before he flies to Glasgow to sail around Scotland with Adventure Canada, Ken will don his hat as chair of the Public Lending Right Commission to moderate a panel (PLR: 25 More Years Please) at the annual general meeting of The Writers' Union of Canada. That's open to the public, 9:30 a.m. at the Courtyard Marriot, 475 Yonge Street. Details: please click here.

As for the voyage, well it's sold out. www.adventurecanada.com

Happy 25th anniversary PLR . . .

2011-04-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

From Barrie to Harbord House . . .

2011-04-05T14:46:00.000-07:00

Turns out that, before he talks to the Canadian Celtic Arts Association in Toronto (see below), Our Hero will head out to Barrie for the L3 Writers' Conference, where he will perform with Romeo Dallaire, George Elliott Clarke, and Nino Ricci. That's April 14, an evening event at Barrie North Collegiate (click on the headline above). During the day, Ken will entertain 60-80 high school students with a talk he's calling Nothing is More Fun / Than Canadian History. After the Celtic Association event, and immediately before the annual general meeting of The Writers' Union of Canada, Our Boy will perform at a Creative Nonfiction Cabaret along with Merilyn Simonds, Wayne Grady, Marni Jackson, Don Gillmor, Rosemary Sullivan and Andrew Westoll. That event, hosted by Maggie Siggins, happens at Harbord House Pub on May 25. Short readings, that environment . . . can't miss.

Our Hero visits Canadian Celtic Arts Association

2011-03-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

It's being billed as a talk, but of course it will be a full-blown presentation complete with slides. The invitation comes from the Canadian Celtic Arts Association and Celtic Studies at University of Toronto. The venue is the Alumni Hall, St. Michael's College, U of T, 121 St. Joseph Street (just south of Museum Station). Modesty prevents Our Hero from quoting the poster prepared by event organizers, but if you simply MUST see it, click on the headline above. . . . See you there?

Meanwhile, across the pond in Scotland . . .

2011-03-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

Kenny MacAskill (left), minister of justice in the Scottish government, and Graeme Murdoch, an Edinburgh-based force of nature who is driving Tartan Day celebrations here in Canada, strike a winning pose with a favourite book. MacAskill has written or co-authored at least three books, and has had much to say about the need for Scots at home to engage with the Diaspora around the world. Tartan Day happens April 6, and for days either side of that date, Maple-Leaf-tartan types will have no trouble finding things to do.

Maple Leaf tartan made official . . .

2011-03-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

Why is this man grinning? Perhaps because he senses that the Maple Leaf Tartan, which he is sporting, is about to be made official. Also, Margaret has just given him a bag containing a box containing a bottle. A bag in the blessed official tartan, to match his vest and tie. Would you believe 16-year-old Lagavulin? Hats off to Liberal Senator Elizabeth Hubley for leading the charge on the tartan. And, again, to the Royal Scottish Country Dancing Society . . . for knowing how to show a guy a good time!

Major shout-out to Manitoba history buffs and Scottish Country Dancers

2011-02-21T11:08:00.000-08:00

Whew! Talk about a crazy couple of weeks. How the Scots is like a tail grown far too fond of swinging around an old dog. Of course, I love it. But I want to do a double shout-out. Huge thanks, first to Harry Duckworth and friends at the Manitoba Historical Society. They flew me to Winnipeg to address the 46th annual John A. Macdonald Dinner at the Fort Garry Hotel, and gave me an incredibly warm welcome, starting with a pre-event dinner at Cafe Carlo. The Macdonald extravaganza unfolded two Saturdays ago, and drove the Scots to the top of the Winnipeg bestseller list. Then, this past Saturday, the Royal Scottish Country Dancing Society of Toronto had me and Sheena reeling around at the Royal York Hotel. Not only that, but they went far, far beyond the call of duty -- I'm thinking Louis Racic, Margaret Reiger, Barbara Taylor AND their spouses -- in getting us up to speed for the 48th annual Tartan Ball (more or less up to speed, I mean, for at least three dances). No mean feat! And to cap it all off with a bottle of Lagavulin? Well, what can I say: HUGE THANKS!

Northern Exposure

2011-02-18T20:22:00.000-08:00

Our hero turns up Saturday (Feb. 19) in the Globe and Mail reviewing The Magnetic North by Sara Wheeler. . . .

"Toward the end of this book, Sara Wheeler describes a recent visit to the medieval Solovki monastery in Siberia, located on an island in the White Sea near the Arctic Circle. Solovki “had functioned as a dumping ground for undesirables for centuries,” she writes, while evoking both a grim today of true-believer tour guides and a horrendous yesterday of massacres, rapes, tortures and mutilations. . . ."
To read the rest, click here.

In Praise of the Maple Leaf Tartan

2011-02-04T20:23:00.000-08:00

The inclusiveness of it. That's what I like about the Maple Leaf tartan. That's what makes it special. The waistcoat I wear when I sally forth in formal dress? The matching tie? They are in the Maple Leaf tartan. So now a Liberal senator is proposing a bill to establish that tartan as the official national tartan. The tartan was registered in 2008. To make it official requires only a government proclamation. And surely this is overdue? Any Canadian who wishes to embrace the Scottish pluralism of Canada -- the multi-ethnic and multi-racial dimension of the country, as introduced early by such figures as Major John Norton, the Cherokee Scot, and James Douglas, the "Scottish West Indian" -- can join the parade in the Maple Leaf tartan. While we're at it (checking the above link), let's also establish April 6 as Tartan Day in Canada. Stand fast, Craigellachie!

The ineffable Shelagh Rogers . . .

2011-01-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

Shelagh Heather Sutherland Rogers has her way with Our Hero.
If you feel a yen to visit Scotland, press the Scots tab above and follow the link to win a free trip around the Scottish Isles with Adventure Canada . . .

Six minutes with Our Hero

2011-01-22T09:59:00.000-08:00

This interview popped up out of CBC Calgary.
Those who crave a longer conversation (hi, Mom!) should tune in Monday to The Next Chapter, the Shelagh Rogers show on CBC Radio One (1 pm). Shelagh is arguably the best on-air interviewer in the country, and we covered a lot of ground.
For the rest, Our Hero has four day-time talks/lectures lined up in the Toronto area, three University of Toronto lectures at various campuses (Markham, Oakville, St. George), and one talk at the Toronto Reference Library (Feb. 8).
On January 30, we have dram-dispensing at the Adventure Canada polar bear dip. And evenings?
Feb. 10 is Booklovers Ball.
Feb. 12 is Manitoba Historical Society in Winnipeg,
Feb. 17 is St. Andrews Society of Toronto.
Feb. 19 is guest of honour at the Scottish Tartan Ball.

Meanwhile, in the Saint John Telegraph, the Scots have battled to the number two spot, behind only
William and Kate. Fight on, Craighellachie!

Robbie Burns saved!

2011-01-14T19:09:00.000-08:00

All's well that ends well.
Click here to read a Fredericton Gleaner article about the salvation of Robbie Burns.
In part, it says . . ..

Mayor Brad Woodside on Monday night announced that J.K. and Jean Irving will underwrite the cost of the statue's restoration. The total cost will be between $106,559 and $120,000. There's a design contingency of $13,444 in the bid. The city is only contributing $39,000 to the rebuilding of the statue's base, out of a 2010 budget capital budget reserve carry over.

Robbie Burns inspires righteous double-whammy

2011-01-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

The Fredericton Daily Gleaner is all over this story. . . and quite rightly.


City making 'grievous mistake' with statue Daily Gleaner Ken McGoogan of Toronto said he's shocked the city is refusing to fund the restoration of the statue's base along the banks of the St. John River near the ...
Funding refusal is a slap in the face Daily Gleaner By KEN McGOOGAN I was shocked to learn that the City of Fredericton is refusing to fund the restoration of its statue of Robbie Burns. ...

Robbie Burns mistreated in Fredericton

2011-01-05T14:23:00.000-08:00

Open Letter from Ken McGoogan, author of How the Scots Invented Canada

I was shocked to learn that the City of Fredericton is refusing to fund the restoration of its statue of Robbie Burns. I vividly remember that memorial from my sojourn in that city as writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick. I can’t help seeing this decision as a slap in the face to all those Scots who have played such a foundational role in the development of New Brunswick. Having recently written and published How the Scots Invented Canada, I can tell you that people of Scottish heritage constitute 20 per cent of the province’s population (by the 2006 census, 142,560), and that they have made a formidable contribution.

I think of the Irving industrial empire, which is worth $8 or $9 billion. Founder Kenneth Colvin Irving was born in 1899 in Bouctouche, N.B., into a fourth-generation Canadian family of Scottish descent. I think of McCain Foods, the world’s largest producer of French fries and other frozen foods, which is based in Florenceville, N.B. Built by descendants of Ulster Scots, that company today has more than 20,000 employees at fifty-five production facilities. I think of Sobey’s, the second-largest food chain in Canada, which is connected to Scotland through Pictou, Nova Scotia, but has a notable presence throughout New Brunswick, including Fredericton.

I think of Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, who played such a crucial role in winning the Second World War, and who is so closely connected with Fredericton. Yet another proud son of New Brunswick, David Adams Richards, probably went too far when he described Beaverbrook as “by far the most influential and important Canadian of the twentieth century.” But nobody would dispute, surely, that Beaverbrook – the son of a thundering Presbyterian minister -- is a major figure in the history of New Brunswick? And what about the Reverend James Somerville, a Scottish graduate of the University of Aberdeen, who held the first college classes in Fredericton in 1822, and did so much to spur the development of the University of New Brunswick. The list goes on and on.

The Fredericton statue of Robbie Burns, in addition to being of notable artistic merit, symbolizes the contribution of the Scots to the province of New Brunswick. The City has made a grievous mistake in refusing to restore it – a mistake that, if it is not rectified, will give Fredericton a black eye not just across the country, but around the world.

How the Scots hit the New Year running . . .

2011-01-03T13:49:00.000-08:00

Monday, Jan. 24: With Robbie Burns Day looming, Our Hero chats about Scots with Sheila Rogers on The Next Chapter, CBC One, 1 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 8: Toronto Reference Library. 1-3 p.m
Saturday, Feb. 12: Winnipeg, Manitoba Historical Society. Featured speaker, 46th annual Sir John A. Macdonald dinner.
Thursday, Feb. 17. Markham. U of T Lecture Series. 1 p.m.
Thursday, Feb. 17. Toronto, St. Andrews Society. 8 p.m.
Saturday, Feb. 19. Toronto, Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. Tartan Ball, guest of honour.
Wednesday, Feb. 23. Oakville. U of T Lecture Series. 1 p.m.
Friday, March 4. Toronto. U of T Lecture Series, 1 p.m.

The TLS is hip to Toronto . . .

2010-12-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

Turns out the TLS has a soft spot for Toronto. In an upbeat review of How the Scots Invented Canada, the London-based journal (Dec. 10) -- no stranger to acerbic commentary -- encapsulates my take on an early governor-general. It then says that John Buchan's words, "as McGoogan notes in this enjoyable book, show that he would be very much at home in a Toronto that would horrify Bishop Strachan -- a city the United Nations has called the world's most multi-cultural."
Love the whole review. And the same can be said of the one that turns up in the January-February issue of Canadian Geographic magazine. Here we read that "McGoogan expands on [Arthur Herman's] narrative by focusing on a few dozen path-breaking Scots; he claims that these men and women and their descendants have been the invisible architects of Canada, laying the foundation for a pluralistic nation that would eventually become “the world’s first postmodern democracy.” Ambitious, resourceful and well educated, these Scots emerged as leaders in Canadian exploration, politics, business, education, literature and science." You can read the rest by clicking on the headline above.

Excellence in Teaching Award

2010-12-15T09:15:00.000-08:00

Much as I hate blowing my own horn, I do have to thank the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies for presenting me with an Excellence in Teaching Award. It sounds cynical, I know, but I've always believed that these awards went to those who lobbied for them. So this one came as a huge surprise. When Lee Gowan, head of the Creative Writing Program, phoned and said he was donning his official hat, I thought: "Uh oh. I have been found out!" Then, in handing out the award, Marilynn Booth, director of the SCS, said so many nice things that she made me blush . . . and THAT is not easy to do. Photographer Max Summerlee took some great shots, among them this one of Marilynn and me.

Manitoba, Canada, and the North 2011

2010-12-08T18:09:00.000-08:00

You have to love the way the Manitoba Historical Society is bringing me in for the 46th annual Sir John A. Macdonald Dinner. They know how to treat an author! And check out the new Adventure Canada brochure. I've been traveling with these folks, experts all, for a few years now, and I swear they just keep getting better. If you scroll down, you can find Our Hero writing about his 10 weeks of road-trip rambling around Scotland, summarized in How the Scots Invented Canada. Then comes the confession about how I glossed over two key moments. "The first came when westood in the wind at the Mull of Kintyre in the south of Scotland. We had arrived in a morning fog, but as we stood gazing over the water, the fog lifted and, sure enough, we could see it, not twenty kilometres away: the northcoast of Ireland. We could almost touch it.The second moment occurred on that coast. Having deked over to Ireland, we were staying at a B&B just outsideBallycastle. One evening, we chased a rugged, cliffside path along the rocky coast until, as promised, we came to the ruins of a magnificent castle." Read the rest by scrolling down here. Go head, you know you want to!

The view from Vancouver Island . . .

2010-12-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

Scots had vital role in Canadian history

By Dave Obee / Victoria Times-Colonist / December 5, 2010

Without the work of the Scots, Vancouver Island would be a much different place. Take it from Ken McGoogan -- although, judging by the name, he just might have a bias of sorts.
McGoogan's How The Scots Invented Canada looks beyond the Island, of course, because it turns out that Scots have played major roles from sea to sea to sea (really). But it is still remarkable to note the Island connections in this collection of biographies of notable Canadian Scots.
At the top of the list of would surely be James Douglas, who quite rightly is known as the father of British Columbia. Douglas determined the location of the Hudson's Bay Company fort that grew into the city of Victoria, and guided us through the gold rush that made us back in the 1850s. . . .

How the Scots Get Ready to Party . . .

2010-11-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

James Jerzy McGoogan

My favourite Scottish holiday tradition has long been The Ba. That’s the lunatic game the Orcadian Scots play at Christmas and New Year’s. A couple of hundred players, mostly young men, take over the streets of Kirkwall and participate in this rugby-like game that involves carrying a cork-filled leather ball, “the ba,” either up the main street or down it. Each team has dozens of players, no limit, and some of them harbour grudges. But the main difference from rugby is that there are no rules – none. Anything goes.
So maybe I should clarify. I love the idea of someone else participating in The Ba, whose disputed origins are lost in the mists of time. But no, I cannot recommend that tradition to Canadians who wish to embrace the Scottish dimension of the holiday season that is almost upon us. I am thinking mainly of my one-year-old grandson, James Jerzy McGoogan (pictured above), to whom I dedicated my book How the Scots Invented Canada. Do I want him ever to play in The Ba? No, I do not.

By comparison, Hogmanay is tame. This Scottish celebration starts on New Year’s Eve and runs through the next day and sometimes longer. Scotland’s national poet, Robbie Burns, once revelled in Hogmanay festivities that spun out of control. . . . [Read more by clicking here.]

Here's from Canada's History . . . .

2010-11-20T07:18:00.000-08:00

With Scotland at my shoulder. . . .

When I write history, I try to wear my research lightly. And for my last five books, I have been blessed with an outstanding editor, Phyllis Bruce at HarperCollins Canada, who catches me up whenever I let my reading show. “Lighten up,” she writes in the margins. “Too academic!”

In my new book How the Scots Invented Canada, the bibliography runs to sixty titles. Highlights include three collections of essays, a meditation, and a couple of surprises. In The Scottish Tradition in Canada, edited by W. Stanford Reid (M&S, 1976), I found thirteen scholars coming at Canadian life from fourteen angles. . . .
The expose continues here.

How the Scots celebrated at the Atwater Library

2010-11-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

Ken & Cameron at the Atwater Library

So this was the scene at the Atwater Library in Montreal, just before our hero explained How the Scots Invented Canada. That's Cameron Stevens, the Piper Major of the legendary Black Watch regiment. We're facing a goodly crowd that proceeded to do the right thing . . . i.e. they bought every book that was there to be sold, and even one that wasn't. And they filled out more than a few entries, as well, in hopes of winning that voyage through the Scottish Isles. I told the audience, truthfully, that Sheena won us a trip to Scotland last year when her business card got pulled from a jar. So, yes, Virginia, it can happen to you. The Atwater event preceded a fun occasion at Bishop's University, and a two-hour interview with a BBC film crew working on a three-part series about Scots in Canada. Then came Ottawa, where I donned my Public Lending Right cap, and home, where CBC Radio turned me loose on unsuspecting listeners in 11 cities across Canada. Down time is for sissies.

The Toronto Star makes Our Hero tingle?

2010-10-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

Folks have been clamouring for an update. Maybe start with the fabulous reviews in The Toronto Star and January Magazine. The two are radically different, but both made me blush and tingle. Cut to this afternoon and "The Willow" in Hudson, Quebec, where we talked and taped for two hours. This was in aid of a three-part BBC series that will begin airing in February. And it followed hard on radio interviews at CJAD (Montreal), CBC Radio (Quebec), and CJMQ (Sherbrooke). At the Atwater Library in Montreal, the piper major of the Black Watch, Cameron Stevens, piped me to podium -- a special treat. Lynn Verge at the library orchestrated a wondrous event (sold all stock). And in Sherbrooke, at Bishop's University, a terrific audience turned out thanks to Mieke Koppen Tucker, an old friend -- and they bought a truckload of How the Scots and more than a few of my Arctic books. Multitudinous folks entered to win that incredible free voyage around Scotland with Adventure Canada, which is co-sponsored by HarperCollins Canada (which has done something fabulous and exemplary with a revolving homepage). Meanwhile, almost 100 people have checked out the interview at Book Club Buddy.

Win a trip to Scotland!

2010-10-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's really happening. Adventure Canada and HarperCollins Canada are sponsoring a fabulous contest to celebrate the publication of How the Scots Invented Canada. You can win a free voyage through the Scottish Isles -- that's a free berth for one, plus a discount for a companion. How cool is that! I will be sailing on this expeditionary cruise as an author-historian. Along with other resource people, I'll give talks and slide-show presentations. As always, we will use Zodiacs to go ashore at different locations. And I promise that, if called upon, I will lead the charge to the nearest pub or whisky distillery. That's the kind of guy I am -- always willing to go that extra mile. Check out How the Scots and see for yourself.

Bonus: Here's a review that turned up in The Edmonton Journal . . . .

MacSkimming and Winter lead the charge?

2010-10-15T18:46:00.000-07:00

Well, geez, already I like the Book Section in tomorrow's Globe and Mail and the paper's not on my doorstep yet. First we discover Roy MacSkimming writing about How the Scots Invented Canada:
"There’s indeed much fun here, as well as instruction (Scots always like that), and your name doesn’t have to begin with Mc or Mac to savour this book." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/how-the-scots-invented-canada-by-ken-mcgoogan/article1758926/

Then we find Kathleen Winter talking about Lady Franklin's Revenge: "What I love about this book, aside from McGoogan’s elegant, lucid and impassioned writing, is the turmoil between the lines." You gotta love it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/the-human-core/article1758785/
Next stops: Montreal and Sherbrooke. More details to your right under What's New.

Adventure Canada joins HarperCollins in launching the Scots

2010-10-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

So how cool was that? We had a bagpiper precede me to the stage, we had publisher Phyllis Bruce of HarperCollins Canada produce a bottle of champagne, and we had Matthew Swan announce a fantastic contest involving the book and my next voyage with Adventure Canada. The book is How the Scots Invented Canada. The occasion was the Toronto launch at the Dora Keogh Pub. And the contest will involve sailing through the Scottish Isles, though details won't be announced until next week. For the rest, revelers ended up singing Northwest Passage, and Ben McNally Books moved 50 copies of the opus -- a sell out! Here, in a photo by Peter Rehak, you see Matthew capping an array of gifts with . . . wait for it . . . a can of haggis. Maybe you had to be there.

Missing Amundsen photo turns up in Yellowknife museum

2010-09-30T06:41:00.000-07:00

Here's the "final answer" as reported in The Gazette. . . .

By KEN MCGOOGAN

A Yellowknife heritage centre holds the final answer to questions raised by the opening of an Arctic "mystery box" excavated from a cairn in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut.

The wooden box, according to those who opened it Friday in Ottawa, contained no items related to Arctic explorers Sir John Franklin or Roald Amundsen. Officials from the Canadian Conservation Institute and the Nunavut government said the box, excavated at the beginning of September, contained only bits of a cardboard box, plus "pieces of newspaper, and what appeared to be tallow" beneath sand and rocks.

Yet a retired Hudson's Bay Company manager, Eric Mitchell, had said that in the late 1950s, the wooden box contained an inscribed photograph left by Amundsen in 1905. He knew this because he helped put it there. So where did that photograph go?

The Nunavut government launched this month's excavation after an Inuit family relayed oral history suggesting that the cairn contained records from the ill-fated 1845 expedition led by Sir John Franklin in search of the Northwest Passage.

Researchers, dubious about the Franklin claim, tracked Eric Mitchell to northern Ontario. Mitchell said that, with his co-worker George Washington Porter II, he dug up the Amundsen deposit in 1958. The two men found a photograph first discovered in 1927 by William "Paddy" Gibson, a Hudson's Bay Company inspector who reburied it. Gibson wrote in The Beaver magazine of finding the signedphotoof GeorgV. Neumayer, a German scientist who had sparked Amundsen's interest in the North Magnetic Pole.

Mitchell put the photo in the wooden box, and asked Porter II to rebuild a Gjoa Haven cairn that commemorated the 1942 death of Gibson in an airplane crash, incorporating the Amundsen-related photograph. This Porter did.

In recent months, descendants of Porter, apparently confusing Amundsen and Franklin, convinced Nunavut government archaeologists to excavate the cairn, suggesting there were Franklin artifacts buried under it. Though the box turned out to contain no artifacts when it was finally opened last Friday, the archaeologists and conservationists working on the project nevertheless promised this week to release an update "once the contents of the box have been further analyzed and assessed." They said nothing about the Neumayer photograph left by Amundsen.

But according to Gjoa Haven resident Louie Kamookak, who is the grandson of Paddy Gibson, another Hudson's Bay Company man dug up the photograph in the late 1970s, while once again repairing the cairn.

Kamookak said that this man, worried about deterioration, took the photo to Yellowknife, where it ended up at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

That centre has confirmed that the archives has the photograph in its Nunavut collection, and that it contains the inscription: "Best wishes for success in exploring the North Magnetic Pole, to his friend Roald Amundsen."

Ken McGoogan, author of several books about Arctic exploration, has just published How the Scots Invented Canada.

No Franklin, no Amundsen: Why the delay?

2010-09-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

So the box contains no Franklin items. For that I was ready. But nothing related to Roald Amundsen? That was a surprise. But then my old friend Louie Kamookak clarified for me. He was one of the two men with whom I once placed a plaque on the coast of Boothia Peninsula to honour the discovery, by John Rae, of the final link in the Northwest Passage. Louie is also the grandson of Paddy Gibson, the HBC man who dug up the Amundsen photo (of Neumayer) in 1927. George Washington Porter reburied it in the late 1950s. But then, in the late 1970s, Louie explained, another HBC man took the Neumayer photo and the slab of marble that Amundsen left and brought them to Yellowknife, so they ended up
in government storage. So that would be why the delay. Almost certainly, that HBC man left a note in the box before he reburied it -- a note explaining what he had done. So now, before they reveal the note,
those who dug up the box want to locate the Neumayer photo and the marble slab, so they can produce them at the same time.That's my thinking on it, anyway. Oh, and one more thing: Louie Kamookak would like to see the cairn honouring Paddy Gibson rebuilt. That doesn't seem a lot to ask.

U.K. authors battling for Public Lending Right

2010-09-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

It's a bad movie that we don't want to see playing in local theatres any time soon. Authors in the U.K. are mobilizing to stop the government from making cuts to the national Public Lending Right, which provides authors with a payment of six pence each time one of their books is checked out from a U.K. library. Many prominent writers have added their names to a petition requesting that the government keep PLR, which they say “gives effect to a legal right and is not a subsidy,” intact. Crime writer Penny Grubb says in The Guardian that a looming funding review will be a “dog fight,” but called for action to ensure that PLR money remains untouched: “With average earnings for writers so low, and with such a short shelf life for books in shops these days, PLR income for many writers is a vital part of their take-home pay.” There's more where that came from, but some of the ill-informed comments on the article are . . . disheartening.

There WILL be bagpipes . . .

2010-09-22T16:52:00.000-07:00

If you live in the Centre of the Universe, or even if you're just visiting, there WILL be bagpipes at this bookish bash . . . for reasons that may well be obvious. Come on down!

Would you believe another discovery of Franklin relics?

2010-09-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

At first I was sceptical. But the more I looked at it, the more interested I became. A British adventurer, a TV-show-host named Bear Grylls, reports happening upon a possible Franklin site, complete with graves, on a tiny island in Wellington Strait, northeast of King William Island. That story turned up in the U.K. in The Independent, and was picked up in Canada in The Gazette. What Grylls did not know was that in May 1859, while searching in this vicinity on behalf of Lady Franklin, explorer Leopold McClintock passed through this strait, which is not to be confused with Wellington Channel. He sledged south along the icy shoreline of King William Island, then crossed the southern part of the strait to the southwest tip of Matty Island. There he found a deserted Inuit village of nearly twenty snowhuts. Also, he discovered "shavings or chips of different kinds of wood from the lost expedition." McClintock tried and failed to find the Inuit who had lived there, and he resumed his southward march. He did not visit the precise area Grylls describes -- though that tiny island would appear to be just a few miles north of the tip of Matty Island. This is intriguing, and worthy of further research.

How the Scots Invented Canada

2010-09-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

Our Hero is heading for Halifax, Montreal, and Sherbooke to launch his new book, How the Scots Invented Canada. On October 12, his 7 p.m. appearance at Woodlawn Public Library (Dartmouth) will be televised for broadcast by Podium TV. Two weeks later, on Oct. 28, Ken will be in Montreal at the Atwater Public Library (12:30 p.m.). And the night after that (Oct. 29), he'll present the book at Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec. In Toronto, Adventure Canada will join publisher HarperCollins Canada in celebrating How the Scots at a party-time venue soon to be revealed -- and you just know that will be a party. Ken is already pumped for next spring, when he will sail around Scotland with Adventure Canada on Celtic Quest: A Voyage Through the Scottish Isles (May 31 - June 10). And before any of this happens, on Sept 15, Ken will drive out to North Bay to talk to the Canadian Club about Sailing in the Northwest Passage: Today and Yesterday.

Our "mystery box" goes national . . .

2010-09-09T05:48:00.000-07:00

Click on the above title and look to the right to see how our mystery-box story looked when it turned up on The National . . . All that's left is the Great Reveal, which should happen around Sept. 29 . . .

VIDEO: 3:06

* Franklin Expedition box unearthed An Inuit family says a box that was hidden for more than 80 years in the Arctic contains logbooks linked to the doomed Franklin Expedition, the CBC's Jay Legere reports.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/09/07/franklin-records.html#ixzz0z2IEgp3M

Arctic mystery box linked to Roald Amundsen

2010-09-06T03:12:00.000-07:00

So here's a follow-up article that has been picked up across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver.

By Ken McGoogan
Special to the Gazette

An old wooden box excavated from beneath an Arctic cairn is being flown unopened to Ottawa Monday from the Nunavut hamlet of Gjoa Haven.

The Nunavut-government launched the excavation after an Inuit family relayed oral history suggesting that the cairn contained records from the ill-fated 1845 expedition led by Sir John Franklin in search of the Northwest Passage.

But Canadian historian Kenn Harper, who has spent months researching the cairn, says the box will prove to contain records left in 1905 by explorer Roald Amundsen during the first-ever navigation of the Passage.

The box, which measures 14.5” x 11” x 6.5”, will be opened and its contents preserved at the Canadian Conservation Institute.

Harper, author of the best-selling Inuit biography Give Me My Father’s Body, and also Honorary Danish Consul in Nunavut, says the box contains papers that Amundsen buried after spending almost two years in Gjoa Haven tracking the movements of the North Magnetic Pole.

He began investigating the cairn after learning of the claim by descendants of George Washington Porter II, a Hudson’s Bay Company manager based in that hamlet on King William Island.

Harper says that Eric Mitchell of the HBC, the senior man in the territory, dug up the Amundsen records in 1958, with the help of Porter II. The two men found documents that had first been discovered in 1927 by William “Paddy” Gibson, an HBC inspector who reburied them.

Gibson wrote in The Beaver magazine of finding the records, which included a signed photograph of Georg V. Neumayer, a German scientist who had sparked Amundsen’s interest in the North Magnetic Pole.

In 1959 or ’60, Eric Mitchell – who was based at Spence Bay (Taloyaok) – asked Porter II to rebuild a Gjoa Haven cairn that commemorated the 1942 death of Gibson in an airplane crash, and to incorporate the Amundsen records the two of them had recently unearthed.

Harper predicted that the Saturday excavation would turn up an old HBC ammunition box. Andrew Porter, who runs a tourism business in Gjoa Haven, says that just such a box was found three feet beneath the cairn.

Harper says the unopened box contains a metal canister in a bed of tallow. Inside the canister, conservators will find the Amundsen documents in an envelope sewn into an oilskin packet and wrapped in pages from a 1950s Nautical Almanac and an Edmonton newspaper.

Eric Mitchell was not present when Porter II rebuilt the cairn. And Wally Porter remains convinced: “All we know is that records belonging to John Franklin were put in the box,” he said by telephone. “And now we’ve found the box.”

But Harper, who has lived in the Arctic for over thirty years, doubts that any Franklin documents will be found. He believes that oral history has confused Franklin and Amundsen.

Kenn Harper was interviewed by email and posted a guest blog at an Arctic website (http://visionsnorth.blogspot.com) maintained by Rhode Island College professor Russell Potter.

The Holy Grail of Arctic exploration history

2010-09-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

The voyage came courtesy of Adventure Canada, which brought me aboard as a resource historian. The Montreal Gazette published the story on Sept. 3. The Vancouver Sun picked it up immediately. The excavation of the cairn may take three or four days.

By Ken McGoogan

Special to the Gazette

GJOA HAVEN, King William Island, Nunavut –

The search for the logbooks of the ill-fated Franklin expedition -- the Holy Grail of Arctic exploration history – has taken on new life.

An Inuit family based in Gjoa Haven, the only settlement near the spot where the 1845 expedition got trapped in the ice, is promising to unearth those logbooks on Saturday (September 4).

Researchers and historians have been searching for the logbooks since the 129-man expedition led by Sir John Franklin disappeared while searching for the Northwest Passage.

The expedition got trapped in pack ice at the northwest corner of King William Island, roughly 160 km from Gjoa Haven. In 1847, 105 sailors endured a horrific march down the west coast of the island before succumbing to scurvy, starvation and lead poisoning. The final survivors resorted to cannibalism.

Wally Porter and Ken

Descendants of George Washington Porter II, a Hudson’s Bay Company manager, say they will excavate the logbooks from beneath a cairn in the centre of Gjoa Haven (pop. 1,100). “Timing is everything,” said family spokesperson Wally Porter. “And the time has come to show the world these logbooks.”

Porter said in a recent interview that his grandfather, Porter II, buried the documents beneath the cairn when it was rebuilt in the late 1950s or early ’60s. The cairn had deteriorated since it was erected in 1944 to commemorate William “Paddy” Gibson, an HBC inspector who had died in a plane crash two years before.

Down through the decades, historians have often speculated that the Inuit on King William Island discovered the logbooks. But until now, the story has been that they scattered the pages to the wind.

The oral history relayed by Wally Porter suggests that, while the Inuit discoverers could not decipher the handwritten logbooks, they knew they had found something of value. He said his grandfather received the documents from a Roman Catholic priest based in Gjoa Haven. Probably, they were the only people in town who could read English.

According to Porter, his grandfather wrapped the logbooks in wax-treated canvas and sealed them inside a metal container before burying them. He added that the records under the cairn are covered by a marble stone left here by Roald Amundsen, who spent two winters in Gjoa Haven while becoming the first explorer to navigate the Northwest Passage in 1903-06.

If unearthed in readable condition, the logbooks would describe how the first two dozen men died, and how officers reacted. They would contain details about Franklin’s death and burial (whether on land or at sea), and would answer the disputed question: Did Franklin discover a navigable Northwest Passage? They would explain why the final survivors trekked south rather than east towards a known cache of food, and point to the location of the still-missing ships, the Erebus and the Terror.

The Porter family claim has its sceptics. Louie Kamookak, the Gjoa-Haven-based grandson of the man to whom the cairn is dedicated, says that in the 1980s, he interviewed the two men who built the original cairn. He believes the excavation will turn up old trading company documents. Still, he will attend the excavation.

An archaeologist / conservator from the Nunavut government will supervise the proceedings, and the CBC will record them. Once unearthed, whatever is found will be sent for preservation to the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa, and then returned to the Porter family in Gjoa Haven.

In November 2009, historian David F. Pelly interviewed the Porter family about the documents. He prepared a report for the Nunavut government. Wally Porter showed this report to the present writer, who visited Gjoa Haven while sailing through the Northwest Passage as a resource historian with Adventure Canada, a Mississauga-based travel company.

Pelly had been contacted by the family in September. He relayed information to the Nunavut government, and then interviewed the family in the presence of two lawyers and a government archaeologist. All parties agreed that the documents cannot be examined at the excavation site. They also agreed that the documents remain the property of the Porter family, and that, after a process of conservation, they will be returned to Gjoa Haven for future display.

George Washington Porter II was born in 1895 at Herschel Island, the son of a Scottish whaling captain and an Alaskan Inuit, Mary Kappak. Educated at a mission school in the Aleutian Islands, he moved to Gjoa Haven in 1927 and set up an outpost for the Canalaska Trading Company. In the late 1930s, that Company was absorbed by the Hudson’s Bay Company.

With his wife, Martha Nuliajuk, Porter II raised ten children. In 1984, just before he died, he told his son Chester about the Franklin logbooks. Chester Porter shared that secret with family members in summer 2009.

Ken McGoogan, whose books include Fatal Passage and Lady Franklin's Revenge, will publish How the Scots Invented Canada in October. He was aboard the Clipper Adventurer that recently went aground while carrying adventure travellers through the Northwest Passage.

Good company for a cross-country road triip

2010-08-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

Hitting the Road

Thirteen of Canada’s leading writers pick essential stops on a cross-country literary tour.

It’s summertime. Time to strap on the seat belts and go exploring, across all of this country’s provinces and territories. And we will need some great reading matter to help eat up the kilometres and tell us something essential about the land we are crossing. Thirteen of Canada’s best writers have volunteered to act as literary guides for a patch they’re particularly familiar with in this enormous quilt we live on, so let’s get moving. In honour of Vancouver 2010, we have decided to follow the route (more or less) of the Olympic Torch.

Ken McGoogan’s latest book, How the Scots Invented Canada, will be published by HarperCollins in October 2010.

Elizabeth Hay is the author of Late Nights on Air, winner of the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

John Ralston Saul is author of A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (Viking, 2008) and chair of the LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium.
To read the rest, click on the title. Oh, and don't miss the caricatures that turns up on the front of the magazine.

Do I love Switzerland?

2010-07-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

BERN -- Start with practicalities, say the transit system. Nothing but gorgeous, hi-tech trams, two or three cars long, bright red, zooming along on schedule to the minute. To the minute! This is the clockwork efficiency you hear so much about. And, okay, what about those public toilets? I am mortified to imagine what the Swiss must think when they go into a urinal at a Canadian railway station, or even at an airport. These places are CLEAN. SPARKLING CLEAN, like they are in your own home and you have guests coming over. The level of maintenance of all things Swiss is impressive, even astonishing. I mean, many of these houses and buildings date from the sixteen or seventeen hundreds, and yet here they stand, erect, entirely usable, fully functioning. In Switzerland, too, as elsewhere in Europe, you can't miss the history . . . . and, indeed, the respect for all things cultural: artists, writers, intellectuals. Respect and, yes, even reverence. Go figure. As for beggars in the street, if you hunt really, really hard, maybe you can find one. In this country, somehow, they keep people from falling fall through the cracks. Do I love Switzerland?

Um, does the author ever get paid?

2010-07-05T04:27:00.000-07:00

A recent story in the London Free Press shows why authors are wondering about the way ebooks are rolling into libraries. The future is now, the story tells us, and more and folks are "taking out books electronically, downloading titles from the comfort of their own computers."
At the London Public Library, which is just an example of a trend, the use of ebooks is growing exponentially, with more than 1,000 titles in the electronic catalogue, a number that may very well double in the next year.

"Now when librarians look to buy the latest best-sellers," the reporter tells us, "they not only get a few dozen hard copies, but also the rights to two or three electronic versions that can be downloaded to one customer at-a-time."
The e-books save libraries money: no storage costs, no theft, no losses.
The library, again typically, buys the rights to the books from an American company, an "aggregator," rather than a consumer site such as Amazon or Chapters. Those latter sites do not offer the same discounts to librairies.
The only problem with this brave new world is that the author never gets paid.
If a library purchased an ebook through a consumer site or direct from the publisher, for example, an author would at least receive a small royalty. But the way the future is unfolding, if 10,000 people download an ebook through a library, the author never receives a penny.
Lots of room here for improvement. I wonder if, for starters, we should not expand the Public Lending Right Program to include ebooks?

Canadian literature in libraries

2010-06-18T03:25:00.000-07:00

I recently returned from Ottawa, where as chair of the Public Lending Right Commission, I reported to the board of the Canada Council. My main message? Next year (2011) marks the 25th anniversary of the PLR Program, which recognizes Canadian authors for the presence of their books in libraries. These are still early days. But the idea is to launch a year-long celebration of this crucial support program, and of Canadian literature generally, in Toronto next May. We'll begin with a two-night literary extravaganza, open to the public, at the annual general meeting of the Writers' Union of Canada, and finish in Montreal the following February, with TWUC'S francophone counterpart, UNEQ, hosting a literary finale at the Grande Bibliotecque. In between, the trick will be to mount events across the country (readings, panel discussions, performances) to celebrate Canadian books and authors. Stay tuned.

Spaces are going, going . . .

2010-06-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

In fact, already we're eight down, four to go, and as I write we're weeks to deadline. This workshop is heading for capacity. We're talking Narrative Nonfiction at the University of Toronto Summer School July 5 to 9. I've got a new book coming this fall (How the Scots Invented Canada, nice of you to ask), so after this, I'll give teaching a rest until 2011. The great thing about the Summer School is that you not only get panel discussions and readings, but you rub shoulders with all kinds of other writers.
OK, sure, my workshop is the main highlight. But even if you don't manage to latch onto one of those last four spaces, heck, you could probably pick up a few pointers from the likes of Joy Fielding, Ken Babstock, Susan Swan, Peter Robinson, Erika Ritter, Alissa York, Kelley Armstrong, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Randy Boyagoda, Mariko Tamaki, Norman Snider, or Dave Bidini. Yup, it's looking like a party. See ya there.

Kane arrives in Alaska

2010-04-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

Review: ‘Race to Polar Sea’ delivers history, adventure
by David A. James / For the Fairbanks News-Miner

FAIRBANKS - “A scientist studying the effects of extreme stress could hardly do better than to confine nineteen men in a cabin and subject them to intense cold and never-ending darkness while attacking them with scurvy and starvation.”

This sentence summarizes the experience readers are in for when they delve into “Race to the Polar Sea,” Canadian author Ken McGoogan’s account of the journeys of American explorer Elisha Kent Kane. McGoogan, who teaches writing in Toronto, is no stranger to arctic history, and he knows how to tell a good story. In Kane he has an ideal topic.

Elisha Kent Kane was born in Philadelphia in 1820, the son of a politically well-connected judge.

Though suffering from rheumatism and a heart arrhythmia, he was determined to make his mark on the world. He studied medicine and enlisted in the Navy, traversing the globe and racking up adventures from Brazil to Egypt to China. He also volunteered for the Mexican- American War, where he demonstrated both valor and compassion. His book about his exploits made him a household name.

But the far north was where he truly earned his fame. In 1850 he signed up for the first Grinnell Expedition, an American attempt at learning the fate of Sir John Franklin, the British explorer who had left to find the Northwest Passage in 1845 and vanished.

Kane served aboard the Advance, one of two ships sent north. Sailing into northeastern Canada, the crew made a brief stop on Beechey Island where they happened upon the graves of three of Franklin’s men.

This was the first sign anyone had found of the lost expedition. After a winter spent locked in the ice, the Advance sailed south with Kane already planning his return trip.

Back in the U.S., Kane raised funds by not only pitching the need to find Franklin, who many believed was still alive, but also to discover what was then known as the Polar Sea. Most experts at the time believed that the Arctic Ocean was ringed by ice, but that open water teaming with wildlife was contained within. It was hoped that by finding an entrance to this sea, the Northwest Passage could finally be located.

While he was busy laying plans, Kane also fell in love with a young woman named Maggie Fox who was widely known through her work as a spirit rapper, a completely fraudulent means of communicating with the dead. Unable to quench his feelings, and despite his family’s sure disapproval, he promised to marry her upon his return.

In 1853 Kane boarded the Advance again, this time as skipper, and headed north. Rather than return to the graves, he pointed his ship up the narrow channel between Greenland and Baffin Island.

The icy water was difficult to navigate, but by hitching to large icebergs that were drifting northward, the ship kept moving. Laying numerous caches along the way, the crew reached Rensselaer Harbor on the Greenland coast, further north than any vessel had previously ventured, before being iced in.

Kane and his crew explored the region, discovering Humboldt Glacier (the world’s largest) in the process. Two of his men also reached open water to the north, suggesting that the rumored Polar Sea existed. But they would become better known for the ordeal that followed than for their discoveries.

Winter aboard the ship was difficult. The men were cramped into a small space, food and fuel had to be rationed, scurvy was endemic, and trips onto the ice were dangerous. The sun vanished for several months and temperatures frequently plunged to 40-below-zero and more. The crew persevered — though not without dissension and a couple of deaths — and by spring the return of the sun brought plans for the journey home.

What Kane and his men failed to anticipate, however, was that they had reached a location where the ice didn’t always melt. As the summer of 1854 passed, the ship remained bound. Faced with another winter in Rensselaer Harbor, an escape using sledges and whaleboats was attempted.

After failing and retreating to the Advance, the men confronted the grim reality of another long winter.

Eight of them, unwilling to accept this fate, abandoned the rest and headed south.

On board the ship the situation grew ever more dire. Food was in short supply, the ship itself had to cannibalized for firewood, scurvy and frostbite ate away at the men’s bodies, and the cold was even more severe than the previous winter. To top it off, the defectors returned after failing to escape, further diminishing the short supplies.

What kept the men alive was Kane’s ability to establish relations with a band of Inuit who had migrated into the area. By trading goods for food and dogs, he kept most of his men alive, but just barely.

By spring, the only hope for survival lay in a perilous 1,300-mile journey to Upernavik, Greenland over ice and open water, again using sledges and whaleboats. For healthy men this would have been extremely challenging. That Kane’s depleted crew managed it with only one death staggers the imagination.

Kane returned to America a hero, wrote a bestselling account of his journey, and married Maggie Fox.

But his ill health struck him down less than two years later.

Kane has since fallen prey to considerable criticism by historians, and McGoogan has attempted here to restore his good name.

The result is a book that’s a bit too uncritical. Kane had more faults than McGoogan seems willing to acknowledge. But this account is nonetheless quite extraordinary.

McGoogan leaves no doubt that, by any measure, Kane was one of the greatest 19th century Arctic explorers.

David A. James lives in Fairbanks.

Race to the Polar Sea Ken McGoogan Counterpoint, 404 pages 2008, $15.95

Oh Whitman, my Whitman!

2010-04-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

Walt Whitman's Secret, by George Fetherling, Random House Canada, 350 pages, $32.

Reviewed by Ken McGoogan

Globe and Mail Update Published on Friday, Apr. 09, 2010

Nothing in the previous work of George Fetherling has prepared us for this. The man has written dozens of books, among them biographies, histories, contemporary novels, collections of essays and poems, and that autobiographical classic Travels by Night: A Memoir of the Sixties. But none of them approaches Walt Whitman's Secret in ambition or achievement.

With this historical novel, the author sets out to change the way we see a major literary figure, the poet whose Leaves of Grass has attracted the attention of generations of scholars and readers. The result is a stunning success. While remaining within the known facts about the life of Walt Whitman (1819-1892), at least as far as a non-specialist can tell, Fetherling has delivered an imaginative triumph by implicating Whitman in the political action of his times. In the end, the poet's vaunted innocence looks more like a pose.

Such enthusiasm demands full disclosure. Like most published writers in Canada, I do know George Fetherling. We met in the 1970s when he was still “Douglas” and we both worked at The Toronto Star. Over the decades, we have had coffee or lunch six or eight times, and I was one of 60 people invited to his 60th-birthday celebration at Massey College.

Discount this assessment if you must. In my view, Fetherling chose a brilliant narrative strategy. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, he presents a first-person account by an eyewitness, a minor character who, in this case, has a remarkable presence in the historical record. Though we discover his identity only gradually, the narrator is Horace Traubel, the real-life author of Walt Whitman in Camden, a nine-volume biography that focuses on the poet's final years. Traubel, who considered himself Whitman's “spirit child,” visited the poet almost daily from the mid-1880s until his death, and developed his multi-volume portrait from detailed notes of their conversations.

Fetherling creates a subtle tension between Whitman, the keeper of a dark secret, and Traubel, the much younger disciple obsessed with dragging it into the light. That tension keeps us turning pages. Early on, Traubel tells us that “the skeleton in W's closet was not the one outsiders suspected.” Rather, “the supposed revelation W was at such pains to hide from the public while being compelled to reveal it in his work was actually not a secret in the least, but a commonplace truth for limited circulation.” Yes, Walt Whitman was gay. But to the discerning, that was no secret.

Readers who flip through the novel seeking a sentence or a paragraph that reveals Whitman's secret will search in vain. A skilled and sophisticated writer, Fetherling is far beyond such awkward blundering. Whitman's secret concerns U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, and the only rough patch in this otherwise seamless narrative occurs when the author begins weaving it into the fabric.

From the first page on, Traubel addresses “Flora,” who is based on the real-life Flora MacDonald Denison, a Canadian suffragist, radical journalist and admirer of Whitman. This enables Fetherling to introduce a striking Canadian dimension and, more important, to speak intimately of his subject in bringing him to vivid life.

Traubel describes how, for example, when he enters the poet's room, Whitman tells him to throw his hat on the bedpost: “You see, he often hung his trousers in that manner, though his own hat, the soft gray sloucher with the high crown and the sweat stains, lay as usual on the round table by the window, holding down a stack of loose documents. … He had taken off his boots of course but otherwise had fallen asleep fully dressed. The evening was warm and muggy, but he shuffled across the plank floor, struck a match on the side of the stove and tossed it in the firebox.”

As this brief quotation suggests, Fetherling has not only found the perfect point-of-view character, but has given him a credible, entertaining voice. This is especially impressive considering that the narrator is writing, ostensibly, in 1918. When the poet shows him a nude photo of himself, Traubel writes: “I was shocked, for though I had frequently seen him in dishabille, I certainly had never lain eyes on his generative appendage.”

Fetherling also lets Whitman speak for himself, as when the poet comments on a painting by Thomas Eakins of a group of nude boys cavorting on the banks of a river: “They remind us how like a piece of fruit the body is, reaching the perfect state of ripeness that is all too brief. Eakins caught them at that moment, before they had any awareness that the ultimate end of the process is to rot and fall from the branch.”

Walt Whitman's Secret is an adult novel. In pace as in language, it evokes another age. Resolutely unfashionable, utterly convincing, it is a resonant, shimmering work that stakes a claim on posterity.

Ken McGoogan, vice-chairman of the Public Lending Right Commission, has been known to kick off presentations by quoting from Whitman's Song of the Open Road. This autumn, he will publish How the Scots Invented Canada.

Arctic Labyrinths

2010-04-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

In the first issue of Canada's History, the magazine formerly known as The Beaver, our hero reviews a pair of books. . . .

Arctic Labyrinth by Gwyn Williams,
and Joseph-Elzéar Bernier by Marjolaine Saint-Pierre

Reviewed by Ken McGoogan

In his 1908 book about navigating the Northwest Passage, Roald Amundsen explicitly credited the Scottish-Orcadian explorer Dr. John Rae with having shown him where to sail. “His work was of incalculable value to the Gjoa expedition,” Amundsen wrote. “He discovered Rae Strait which separates King William Land from the mainland. In all probability through this strait is the only navigable route for the voyage round the north coast of America. This is the only passage which is free from destructive pack ice.”

Amundsen, the first to sail through the passage — he went from the Atlantic to the Pacific — would remain correct in this assessment for four decades. Not until 1944 would Canadian Henry Larsen, assisted by later technology, become the first to sail the passage using a different route.

Yet in Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage, you will look in vain for the above quotation from Amundsen. In this otherwise impressive survey, historian Glyn Williams gives John Rae no credit for discovering the channel that made the Norwegian’s historic voyage possible.

He tells us that George Back of the Royal Navy and Thomas Simpson of the Hudson’s Bay Company suspected the existence of Rae Strait. But instead of crediting John Rae himself at the appropriate juncture, he quotes Amundsen in praise of Royal Navy Captain Richard Collinson and moves on.

History is always subject to interpretation, and here we see that even distinguished scholars have biases. Williams, an emeritus professor based in London, has written several notable books over the decades. These include both academic studies and popular works on Captain James Cook and Arctic exploration in the eighteenth century.

In Arctic Labyrinth, Williams retells an epic saga marked by shipwreck, starvation, scurvy, frostbite, amputations, and Orcadi an expedition,” probability cannibalism. He writes in a tradition that includes In Quest of the Northwest Passage by Leslie H. Neatby, Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton, and The Search for the North West Passage by Ann Savours.

His book is more detailed than Neatby’s and less lively than Berton’s. He essentially follows Savours from the nineteenth century onwards, and con¬tributes most in relation to the earlier periods — some of which he treated in Voyages of Delusion: The Quest for the Northwest Passage.

The author’s decades-long immer¬sion in exploration history enables him to turn up the occasional nugget. With regard to the five men who disappeared from Martin Frobisher’s 1576 expedition, for example, he reminds us that the later reports of Charles Francis Hall, taken from the Inuit, suggest that those sailors were not murdered after all, as is fre¬quently alleged, but lived peaceably for a winter and then tried to sail away home.

Towards the end of Arctic Labyrinth, noting that Britain ceded its Arctic ter¬ritories to Canada in 1880, Williams touches on the three voyages under¬taken on behalf of the Canadian gov¬ernment by Joseph-Elzéar Bernier. He rightly describes Bernier, a French Cana¬dian born in 1852, as sailing “to confirm Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago at a time when the nationals of other powers were increasingly active in the region.”

Bernier’s greatest moment came on July 1, 1909, when he erected a plaque at Winter Harbour on Melville Island in the Northwest Passage, first reached from the Atlantic by William Edward Parry in 1819. In Joseph-Elzéar Bernier: Champion of Canadian Sovereignty, biog¬rapher Marjolaine Saint-Pierre wisely lets Bernier himself describe that occa¬sion. The captain and his men drank a toast to the Dominion and the prime minister, and “then all assembled around Parry’s Rock to witness the unveiling of a tablet placed at the Rock, commemo¬rating the annexing of the whole of the Arctic archipelago.”

Saint-Pierre’s book includes a rare and spectacular photo of this occasion — one that, had it been spotted ear¬lier, would almost certainly have been included in the recent book 100 Photos That Changed Canada. This group shot at Parry’s Rock is one of more than two hundred black-and-white illustrations included in Saint-Pierre’s work, which looks to be the definitive biography of Bernier.

Ably translated by William Barr, overwhelming in detail, the book traces Bernier’s career from ancestry to legacy. It highlights his hopes of becoming the first to reach the North Pole and the first to sail through the Northwest Passage in a single season. Saint-Pierre shows how government indifference thwarted these dreams.

In his three main voyages, which he undertook between 1906 and 1911, Bernier charted no new lands. But he gathered records left by explorers of the previous century, set up new cairns and monuments, and raised the Canadian flag throughout the Arctic. By these symbolic actions, he strengthened Can¬ada’s claims to the Arctic archipelago.

Both these books belong in the library of any Arctic aficionado.

— Ken McGoogan (Read Bio)

The Nervous Breakdown Interview

2010-03-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

Our hero turns up at The Nervous Breakdown,
a wonderfully edgy site based in California. Here, besides
the self-interview (punch that link) and the travel yarn below,
you can find excerpts and more links. Hey, you gotta love it!

HISTORY
Following in the Wake of Elisha Kent Kane
by KEN MCGOOGAN
BEECHEY ISLAND
10 March 2010

During our first morning in the High Arctic, a polar bear drove us off Beechey Island. We had been walking along the snow-dusted beach where, in 1850, American explorer Elisha Kent Kane discovered the graves of the first three sailors to die during the tragic 1845 expedition of Sir John Franklin.

Kane, serving as doctor with the First U.S. Grinnell Expedition, had been standing with a couple of British officers on the icy, snow-covered shores of Beechey when a sailor came stumbling over a ridge, hollering: “Graves! Graves! Franklin’s winter quarters!”

Kane led his fellow searchers in scrambling over the ice to the makeshift cemetery where we had previously lingered. “Here, amid the sterile uniformity of snow and slate,” he wrote later, “were the headboards of three graves, made after the old orthodox fashion of gravestones at home [in Philadelphia].”

A few of us had had begun walking along the beach towards the ridge where Franklin’s crew had piled tin cans filled with pebbles, intending to use them as ballast. The polar bear, which had been loitering at water's edge half a mile away, began trotting around a curved bay in our direction.

This one-ton creature, we knew, could outrun a race horse. So we scrambled aboard the Zodiacs, the inflatable craft in which we had landed on the beach. No sooner had we fired up the engines than the bear stopped running. It stood a moment gazing at us, then turned and shambled off over a hill.

History said goodbye to the natural world. But both would be back, and the meeting and mingling of distinct northern dimensions would prove characteristic of our two-week expedition.

This "High Arctic Adventure," mounted jointly by Quark Expeditions of Connecticut and Toronto-based Adventure Canada, attracted eighty-seven passengers – most from North America (New Mexico to Newfoundland) but some from England, France, Switzerland, and Australia. Everyone had travelled to Ottawa, then caught a charter flight to Resolute Bay in Nunavut, where we had hopped into Zodiacs, boarded the Akademic Ioffe and settled into cosy cabins.

The Ioffe is no fancy passenger liner but an expeditionary vessel built and operated by Russians. Still, it offers radically different conditions than those faced by the early explorers. In 1853, when he led the Second U.S. Grinnell Expedition north to search for Franklin and the Open Polar Sea, Elisha Kent Kane sailed in the sail-powered Advance – an eighty-eight-foot brigantine that weighed 144 tons. The diesel-driven Ioffe, by comparison, is 384 feet long and weighs 6,450 tons – almost forty-five times the weight of the little wooden Advance.

One hundred and fifty-five years ago, after waving to a last group of whalers off the coast of southern Greenland, Kane lost contact with the outside world. He got trapped in the multi-year ice and, to survive, had to lead a spectacular escape using sledges and small boats. On the Ioffe, we had satellite telephones and email and could have summoned helicopters or other vessels in the event of emergency.

Where Kane battled scurvy and starvation, we ate three square meals a day in a full-service dining room and enjoyed snacks and single malt scotch in a comfortable lounge. The superbly literate American explorer, who came from a prominent Philadelphia family, entertained his men by declaiming the poetry of Alfred Tennyson.

The Ioffe carried a dozen resource people. These included two Inuit (Eskimos) from South Baffin Island; a Sante Fe-based art historian, Carol Heppenstall, who is a leading interpreter of aboriginal art; a marine biologist, an archaeologist, an ornithologist and a narrative historian (yours truly) who, with Berkeley-based Counterpoint Press, has just published a book called Race to the Polar Sea: The Heroic Adventures of Elisha Kent Kane.

For some passengers, the expedition was mainly about culture. Meeka and Jamesie Mike outlined the rudiments of the Inuktitut language and demonstrated how to hitch a dog team. And on the north coast of Baffin Island, we visited Pond Inlet and Clyde River, where we heard throat-singing, played Inuit games, and hosted a community barbecue. Along the way, we bought Inuit carvings and craft products and the Mikes raised $15,000 for a cultural "core knowledge" initiative.

For a second group of passengers, the expedition was mainly about the Arctic outdoors. At Croker Bay, we cruised along a glacier face and among spectacular icebergs. At seven or eight locations, we spotted polar bears, usually but not always alone, and a couple of those creatures clearly perceived us as seals wrapped in goretex.

While traipsing around Devon Island, we drew within a couple of hundred yards of a herd of muskox – as close as anyone wanted to get. And at a walrus haul-out near Monumental Island, while riding in Zodiacs, we drew so near a herd of one hundred walrus that people were gagging at the smell.

History buffs, too, had their moments. That first morning on Beechey, after fleeing the polar bear, we puttered east along the coast to Cape Riley and put in at the ruins of Northumberland House. Here, in the early 1850s, a British search expedition built a storehouse to serve Franklin, should he ever reappear. The rough structure remains visible, though now it lies in ruins, surrounded by rusty tin cans and barrel staves.

On Day Six of the voyage, we visited Dundas Harbour on Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island in the world. Here, from 1924 to 1933, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police maintained a post comprising a house and three or four outbuildings, all of which remain standing.

At this same site, but seven decades previously, in 1853, an adventurous shaman from Baffin Island met the Franklin-searcher Edward Inglefield, who had sailed north into Smith Sound to 78 degrees 28 minutes. Kane would exceed that latitude by about 12 minutes (14 statute miles).

On the Ioffe, the history-minded were hoping to equal or better Kane’s high-latitude mark – a realistic objective given that the multi-year ice in the Arctic is a far cry from what it was in the mid-nineteenth century.

But on Day Six, at four o'clock in the morning, the captain found himself driving north against storm force winds gusting to fifty knots. The temperature of the sea water had fallen to within one degree of freezing, and the ship had started to ice up. Given time, and because the water ahead lay open, the captain might have put into a sheltered bay, waited out the storm and then pushed on. But at 77 degrees 25 minutes, about eighty-five miles short of Kane’s mark, he turned the Ioffe around and sailed south.

For many on board, major highlights were yet to come. My own favourite moment of the expedition came on Day Nine in the middle of Clyde Inlet, off the north coast of Baffin Island. The expedition's finest Zodiac driver, John "Flipper" Suta, had agreed to convey me to Clyde River because I had to do a series of radio interviews.

Within minutes, in the fog and waves, we had lost sight of the ship. We passed a few icebergs, nothing huge, and Flipper got the Zodiac pounding along at fifteen or twenty miles an hour. Five or six miles from the ship, with the waves and rolling swells reaching a height of eight to ten feet, so that roaring over them felt like riding a roller-coaster, an image came to me unsought.

The scale was smaller, but yes, we were climbing upwards against one of the giant waves that featured in The Perfect Storm. When we crested that magnificent swell and started down the other side, I heard someone laughing a wild-sounding, crazy-man laugh and wondered who it was. I glanced over at Flipper and, in that instant, with a rush of exhilaration, recognized the insane laughter as my own.

Watch a video here.

Ken McGoogan sails as a resource historian with Adventure Canada.

Who owns the Arctic?

2010-01-18T08:40:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile, at the Globe and Mail, we find a review of
Who Owns the Arctic? Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North, by Michael Byers, Douglas & McIntyre, 147 pages, $22.95

Reviewed by Ken McGoogan

Published on Monday, Jan. 18, 2010

For Arctic explorers seeking to enter the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic, one of the challenges came early in any voyage: In Davis Strait, the only way to reach Lancaster Sound, they had to cross or go around the so-called Middle Ice. This vast, floating expanse of pack ice, dotted with massive icebergs and rolling “growlers,” has trapped or wrecked scores of vessels down through the centuries.

In 1819, during a lucky year, Edward Parry managed to thread his way through the ice to the entrance of Lancaster Sound. In 1834, he spent two months trying and failing to repeat that accomplishment. In the 1850s, Elisha Kent Kane narrowly escaped shipwreck while crossing the Middle Ice – and that experience was typical.

Flash-forward to the present decade. In the past three years, I have sailed three times in the waters of Davis Strait – and not once have I seen any trace of Middle Ice. In Who Owns the Arctic?, author Michael Byers summarizes the end result this way: “It is one thing to learn from temperature gauges and remote sensing satellites that climate change is accelerating beyond all scientific expectations, and another thing to see the change unfold before your eyes.”

Anybody who even dabbles in the history of Arctic exploration and then sails in the Northwest Passage will arrive at that same realization. Explain it how you will, the Far North has changed radically: Where once great barriers of ice prevented ships from sailing through the archipelago that is Northern Canada, today that ice is nowhere to be found for weeks and even months at a stretch.

“ Canadian officials should start paying greater attention to the Inuit who inhabit the North”

In this short, authoritative, well-written work, Byers – who has led two major research projects in the Arctic – explores the implications of this new navigability. He also provides expert analysis and advice. Because the Northwest Passage will soon offer even oil tankers a route between the Pacific and the Atlantic that is 7,000 kilometres shorter than sailing through the Panama Canal – saving time, fuel and transit fees – “ there is no doubt that ships will come.”

To see the threat requires no prescience. Remember the Exxon Valdez? In 1989, off Alaska, this massive tanker hit a reef and spilled 10.8 million gallons (40 million litres) of crude oil into the water, an environmental disaster that killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds, fish and mammals, and destroyed an ancient way of life for people living in the vicinity.

Canada needs to control shipping through the Northwest Passage. The country needs to establish standards (we won't accept rusting junk vessels) and regulate traffic (who is sailing where and what are they carrying). And so we arrive at the sovereignty issue.

If the Northwest Passage is an international strait, as many Europeans and Americans contend, then ships will be able to sail through it without so much as a by-your-leave. If the passage is Canadian internal waters – and today it comprises several possible routes through dozens of islands – then the federal government can pass the necessary laws to protect our northern environment and citizens.

Having worked with Americans on international commissions, Byers argues that we should be able to gain their support, if only because Canadian control of the passage would serve their security interests: Do they really want terrorists sailing freely in the Canadian North? Of course, we have to demonstrate that we can enforce whatever laws we make. To that end, Byers urges that we immediately begin building “three or four mid-sized, multi-purpose Coast Guard icebreakers ... with a light machine gun mounted on each forward deck.”

At the same time, Canadian officials should start paying greater attention to the Inuit who inhabit the North, not just out of humanitarian concern for fellow Canadians, but because, to speak bluntly, it is in the nation's interest. Having lived in the Arctic for thousands of years, on the islands and also on the ice that links those islands for most of each year, the Inuit constitute our last best argument.

“The strongest element in Canada's [sovereignty] claim,” Byers writes, “is the historical occupation by the Inuit, who have hunted, fished, travelled and lived on the Northwest Passage for millennia.” Together, the Inuit constitute “a powerful manifestation” of Canada's legal position. Byers has found that, when he articulates Canada's stance abroad, “the thousands of years of Inuit use and occupancy of the sea ice is the only dimension of our legal position that resonates with non-Canadians.”

Despite this, when the Harper government decided, rightly, to build a deep-water port in the Arctic, Byers writes, “it ignored Inuit views on the appropriate site.” Instead, it chose a disused lead-and-zinc mine, even though the Inuit “had lobbied hard for a similar facility at Iqaluit” with a view to serving the larger purpose while also boosting the local economy. As one Inuit leader later observed, that kind of decision-making “is not going to work.”

In this comprehensive book, Byers addresses ownership of the oil and gas reserves in the Beaufort Sea, the Arctic activities of the Russians (we shouldn't feel threatened), and the not-so-burning question of who owns tiny Hans Island. As an Arctic-issues primer, this timely, cogent, focused work cannot be beat.

Ken McGoogan, who sails as a resource historian with Adventure Canada, is the award-winning author of four books about the search for the Northwest Passage, among them Fatal Passage and Race to the Polar Sea.

Creative Non-fiction, anyone?

2010-01-09T19:20:00.000-08:00

Back by popular demand: my advanced workshop in Creative Non-fiction at University of Toronto. What the heck is CNF, anyway? We hear the term applied to all kinds of writing. How does Creative Non-fiction differ from journalism? From academic writing? From short stories and novels? Is it okay to mix and match? Why does Our Hero prefer the term "Narrative Non-fiction?"

I came to CNF in the late 1990s when, while writing a book called Fatal Passage, I began bringing together everything I had learned from publishing three novels and thousands of journalistic articles. Short answer to FAQs: Yes, autobiography and memoir belong to the genre, and so does the research-based narrative.

My workshops are you-focused, you-driven. Tell me a true story. I lead discussions and in-class "workouts." In responding to works-in-progress, I am craft-oriented (I have spent crazy amounts of time thinking about craft). This advanced session runs eight weeks, Tuesday nights from 6:30 to 9, starting Feb. 2, 2010. Registration is open (http://learn.utoronto.ca/site3.aspx). Administrative questions, contact bill.zaget@utoronto.ca. Content queries, drop me an email.

Once more into the Northwest Passage

2009-12-11T18:23:00.001-08:00

This one, which turned up in the National Post, finds our hero sailing in the High Arctic with Adventure Canada. You gotta love the podcast, which becomes accessible through the link . . . .

High Arctic: Travelling to the top of the world

So this was the view that greeted explorer Samuel Hearne in 1771, when he became the first European to reach the Arctic coast of North America: a vision of small islands rolling away to the horizon. Hearne had travelled months to get here, trekking northwest across "the Barren Lands" with an ever-changing party of Chipewyan Dene from Prince of Wales Fort at Churchill.

Almost 220 years later, while sailing in September with Adventure Canada, a dozen voyagers stood on the bluffs outside Kugluktuk and revelled in the history of this place. In 1819, five decades after Hearne, a young John Franklin had looked out over this same vista, having led a canoe expedition down the Coppermine River. From here, where the river empties into Coronation Gulf, the naval officer pushed eastward and, overruling his Native guides, went too far: His return journey became a desperate flight for survival during which he lost 11 of his 21 men. Later, in 1845, he would sail into the Arctic with two ships and 128 men - none of whom would ever be seen alive again.

PODCAST: The author discusses the Arctic with the Post's Brad Frenette in the latest NP Traveller Podcast. [Subscribe via iTunes here]

Later still, in 1851, that peerless traveller John Rae reached these bluffs while leading a Hudson's Bay Co. expedition searching for the now-lost Franklin. From here, Rae used snowshoes to cross the ice and explore the southern coast of Victoria Island; then, having retrieved two small boats as the ice melted, he continued the search by water.

Kugluktuk, an Inuit community also known as Coppermine, today boasts a population of 1,300 and an airport with regular flights to Yellowknife and Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. But we visitors, mostly older adventure travellers certain to increase in numbers as the Northwest Passage becomes increasingly viable, had ridden ashore in zodiacs from the Clipper Adventurer, a comfortable expeditionary ship, ice-strengthened, that accommodates about 130 passengers.

After visiting the bluffs, we explored the town, then mixed and mingled at a multi-purpose community centre called The Complex, where locals sold carvings, prints and knitted goods and mounted a cultural presentation with drumming and dancing. For some travellers, the cultural dimension of the voyage was paramount. Resource staff included lawyer-activist Aayu Peter and filmmaker John Houston, who led workshops in the rudiments of Inuktitut while the ship called in at several Inuit communities.

For others, an Arctic voyage is mainly about the outdoors: cruising in zodiacs through spectacular icebergs, or else trekking across the tundra and seeing polar bears, muskox, caribou, seals, Arctic hare, snowy owls - all of which, during our 16-day voyage, we encountered. For history buffs like me, however, who regard Arctic exploration as the great adventure of Canadian history, the touchstone epic that, like the Civil War for Americans, demands a response from every generation, this voyage was all about visiting history-rich sites.

Adventure Canada had originally intended to sail the Clipper Adventurer northwest from Kugluktuk through Prince of Wales Strait, which runs between Victoria and Banks Islands, and then carry on to Greenland. But ice conditions at the mouth of the Strait dictated a change of plans. Those of us who were history-oriented felt almost vindicated because, in 1851, Robert McClure encountered precisely this challenge in the Investigator. After spending three winters trapped in the pack ice, McClure was forced to abandon his ship to destruction.

Mid-voyage we changed course and took the southern route through the Passage - the same one taken (in reverse) by Roald Amundsen in 1903-06, when he became the first to navigate the Northwest Passage. As a result, we made an unanticipated visit to little-known Pasley Bay on the west coast of Boothia Peninsula. Here we discovered a sturdy five-foot cairn, beside which we found a two-decades-old plaque commemorating the maiden voyage in 1988 of a ship called the Henry Larsen.

The cairn itself remained a puzzle until later, when I determined that it had been erected just 67 years ago by Larsen himself. In 1942, while making the first return voyage through the Passage, Larsen spent 10 months trapped in Pasley Bay in the St. Roch. When a crew member died suddenly of a heart attack, Larsen built the cairn to mark his gravesite.

Not far north of Pasley Bay, we veered east through the narrows of Bellot Strait, which is never wider than 1.6 kilometres. In 1851, Jane Lady Franklin dispatched Captain William Kennedy to search for her husband just south of this region, where indeed he had met a sorry end. But Kennedy got trapped in the ice on the east coast of Boothia, and after travelling through this strait by dogsled with Joseph-René Bellot, his second-in-command, Kennedy insisted on continuing west instead of south. Where he and Bellot battled ice and blizzards, we sailed through open waters and saw no icebergs - just four restless polar bears.

Next morning, in cold, blustery weather, we went ashore on Beechey Island, where Franklin spent the winter of 1846 before sailing south to his tragic fate. After visiting the graves of three sailors who died on Beechey, we ranged over the island, careful not to disrupt the site. In 1850, when American explorer Elisha Kent Kane and others discovered the graves, they also found a neat pile of more than 600 tin cans that had been emptied and filled with limestone pebbles, "perhaps to serve as convenient ballast on boating expeditions."

No such pile exists today. But at Northumberland House, two kilometres east of the graves, we counted about 85 of the pebble-filled tins buried in the rocky soil to form the shape of a cross. On the ridge above, the most interesting of several monuments is dedicated to Joseph-René Bellot.

After returning to England with Kennedy, the young Frenchman rejoined the Franklin search in 1853. That August, while anchored off Beechey Island, he volunteered to deliver a message. While he trekked north up Wellington Channel, the ice cracked and Bellot found himself stranded on an ice floe with two men. The three tented overnight, and in the morning, Bellot left the tent ... never to be seen again.

On the Clipper Adventurer, we continued eastward along Baffin Island to Greenland. We traversed Disko Bay, where virtually every sailor who ever entered the Northwest Passage, Franklin included, put in for fresh water. At nearby Ilulissat, in zodiacs, we cruised among the icebergs of the Jakobshvan Isbrae, the fast-moving Greenlandic ice river that has always spawned the largest bergs in the world, including the one that sank the Titanic. This proved a spectacular climax to a 16-day voyage in the wake of John Franklin.

• Ken McGoogan, a recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for History, sailed on this voyage as a resource historian with Adventure Canada. He is the author of four books about the Northwest Passage, the latest of which is Race to the Polar Sea.

IF YOU GO:

High Arctic cruises start in July and run through August and September. Space is limited and people have already started booking: The earlier you reserve cabin space, the better. Voyages vary in length, but 15-day cruises, meals included, start around $6,200. Best bet: check out the websites below.

• Adventure Canada (1-800-363-7566; adventurecanada.com) This Mississauga-based company specializes in High Arctic, Greenland and Northwest Passage cruises.

• Cruise North Expeditons (1-866-263-3220; cruisenorthexpeditions.com) This Inuit-owned company offers High Arctic, Baffin Island and Northwest Passage adventures.

• The Great Canadian Adventure Company (1-888-285-1676; adventures.ca) This Edmonton-based company offers a variety of Arctic voyages and adventures.

IFOA: Here come the Scots!

2009-10-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, here in the Big Smoke, the International Festival of Authors has a Writing Scotland theme happening. The National Post is running a Q&A with some of the participating authors, our hero among them. . . .

This year, the International Festival of Authors has joined forces with the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Scottish Government to present Writing Scotland, a celebration that coincides with Scottish Homecoming and the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns' birth. IFOA has even registered their own tartan! Scotland and Canada have a long and rich history: more than four million Canadians have some kind of Scottish heritage, including many of the Canadian authors at this year's festival: Alice Munro, Alistair MacLeod, Linden MacIntyre.

Throughout IFOA XXX, The Afterword will introduce readers to some of the Scottish writers attending this year's festival.

Today: Scottish-Canadian author Ken McGoogan, who is currently working on a new book about Scottish influences in Canada called Bravehearts & Brassy Lasses: How the Scots Invented Canada.

Q: The population of Scotland is a little over 5 million people, yet it supports such a robust literary culture. What gives?

A: This goes back to the sixteenth century and, ironically, to the fanatical John Knox, the father of Presbyterianism. Knox decreed that every Scot should be able to read the Bible and dispute its teachings. This led to widespread literacy (and disputatiousness), which spawned the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The Scots have been reading, writing and arguing ever since. That`s just who they are.

Q: This is the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns' birth - what's your favourite of The Bard's poems?

A: Ae Fond Kiss. Read about the love affair Burns had with his Clarinda. Then check out this love song as performed by Eddi Reader. Make sure you have a hanky handy.

Q: Canada has a rich history of Scottish immigration -- over 4 million Canadians have some degree of Scottish heritage. Do you feel a connection to the country when you read Canadian literature?

A: According to the 2006 census, 4.7 million Canadians claim Scottish heritage – 15 per cent of our population.. That percentage has remained virtually unchanged since Canada`s first census in 1871. Yet the Scottish influence on Canadian literature has been profound. Our passion for historical novels, for example, derives generally from Scotland (we never severed ties) and specifically from Sir Walter Scott. As for Canadian writers of Scottish heritage, in non-fiction we have such seminal figures as Harold Innis, Donald Creighton, George Grant, John Kenneth Galbraith, Marshall McLuhan, and Farley Mowat. In fiction, the list starts with L.M. Montgomery, Hugh MacLennan, Margaret Laurence, W.O. Mitchell, Alice Munro, and Alistair Macleod, and keeps on growing. Ann-Marie MacDonald? Linden MacIntyre?

Q: Who's the most under-rated Scottish writer, dead or alive?

A: That`s easy: James Boswell. He turned Samuel Johnson, that English eccentric, into a towering literary figure. Without Boswell, Johnson would today be a footnote. Not only that, but Boswell created a genre – contemporary biography – while he was going about this work. And then he got slagged for his . . . questionable lifestyle choices. It`s not right.

No rest for the wicked

2009-10-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

Back from sailing in the Northwest Passage, our hero shifts into high gear. . . .
Monday, Oct. 19, 1 p.m., lectures at LIFE in Association with Ryerson University on the history and geography of the Arctic.
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 6:30 p.m., reads and entertains in The EH List Author Series at the Toronto Public Library, Northern District, 40 Orchard View Blvd.
Saturday, Oct. 24, 1 p.m., moderates a panel discussion on Writing Scotland's Past at the International Festival of Authors. Lakeside Terrace, 235 Queen's Quay West.

Beechey Island Blues

2009-09-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

Our hero frets about the Arctic in today's Globe. . .

By Ken McGoogan

The late Pierre Berton liked to describe how in 1853, when Arctic explorer Leopold McClintock was searching for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin and travelling across spongy, summer-time tundra, he chanced upon cart tracks so fresh that he thought they had been made the previous day. As he studied them, slowly he realized the truth: those tracks had been made by Sir Edward Parry, another Arctic explorer – not yesterday, but thirty-three years before.

The preservative power of the Arctic has loomed large in the Canadian imagination since 1987, when Owen Beattie and John Geiger published Frozen in Time. That book contained photos of the well-preserved bodies of the first three sailors to have died during that last Franklin expedition. Dead since 1846, the three looked as if they might have died last week.

Yet a recent visit to their gravesites on Beechey Island suggests that the preservative power of the Arctic may have met its match – and that match is us. It also reminded me that while Canadians have grown fond of talking about Arctic sovereignty and developing the North, we are failing to take concrete, relatively inexpensive actions that could make a difference both today and tomorrow.

Where to begin? This was my third visit to Beechey Island with Adventure Canada, a conservation-minded travel company based in Mississauga. And the history-rich island, the most famous site in the Arctic, is so confusingly degraded that only on this occasion did I finally sort out what happened where, exactly, in the 1840s and ’50s.

Arriving in two ships late in 1846, the Franklin expedition spent one winter on Beechey before sailing south to its terrible fate. Four years later, in August 1850, American explorer Elisha Kent Kane was among the first men to discover this site. The artistic, articulate Kane sketched the three gravestones, copied their inscriptions, and scoured the area, turning up countless artefacts.

A quarter mile from the graves, he found a neat pile of more than 600 preserved-meat cans. Emptied of food, these cans had been filled with limestone pebbles, “perhaps to serve as convenient ballast on boating expeditions.”

Today, of all that Kane described, only the three headstones (and the bodies before and beneath them) remain – and those headstones are not the originals, which are preserved in Yellowknife, but facsimiles, two of which have been accidentally switched.

The site is further confused by a fourth headstone, which marks the grave of a sailor named Thomas Morgan who died here in 1854; and also by what looks like an unmarked grave, but is in fact the original location of a memorial to Joseph-Rene Bellot, a searcher who died nearby in 1853.

Franklin’s original campsite is today nothing but a shallow pit, unmarked. The 600 pebble-filled tin cans are long gone. About eighty-five of them have been moved a couple of kilometres west to the ruins of Northumberland House, a storehouse erected in 1852-53 in case Franklin should return.

There, half-buried in the sand, those 85 cans form a rusty cross, itself badly damaged. Nearby stand a number of memorials – some of them significant, like Lady Franklin’s monument to Bellot, others irrelevant.

Standing amidst this archaeological chaos, where well-meaning but unaware visitors have bent cans and broken beams, I found myself thinking that they must have arrived unprepared and unguided. A priceless historical record is being destroyed – part of our cultural heritage. And I wondered: Should visitors be banned?

I thought then of a young Inuk woman, a guide I had met a few days before at Kugluktuk, an Inuit settlement at the mouth of the Coppermine River. In 1771, Samuel Hearne had reached that location after an arduous, months-long journey from Churchill on Hudson Bay. To this guide, I had described what Hearne had seen -- seals, tide water markings, an array of islands – and she had been able to lead me to where Hearne must have stood: a bluff overlooking the mouth of the Coppermine River.

That location, the first point charted on the northern coast of North America, and also along the Northwest Passage, remains devoid of signage. After I had spoken of the site to those who accompanied us, and as we walked back into town, the young woman told me, “We need more of these ships stopping here.” She was alluding to the fact that ships bring much-needed spending to any northern community they visit.

Now, on Beechey Island, as I stood amidst the archaeological confusion, I rejected the idea of banning visitors. And surveillance, given the isolation of many sites, is obviously impossible. What we need, I realized anew, is interpretative and cautionary signage at every significant historical site in the north. We should start with Beechey Island, which is both busy and jeopardized, and move on to sites like the mouth of the Coppermine River and Victory Point on King William Island, near where Franklin’s ships got trapped in the ice.

At each site, well-designed interpretive signage should explain and map what exists and caution visitors to ensure that it remains intact. These same interpretative materials should be distributed to travel companies that regularly venture into the Arctic. And those companies should be encouraged or even compelled to follow the example of Adventure Canada, which brings archaeologists, historians and conservationists on every voyage.

As the Northwest Passage becomes increasingly viable, the Arctic will attract more visitors. Relevant sites need protection. And the territory of Nunavut, with a population of 30,000, can hardly be expected to shoulder responsibility. The federal government should act immediately to protect and develop Canada’s exploration history as a natural resource.

Ken McGoogan, a resource historian who sails with Adventure Canada, is the author of four related books about the search for Franklin and the Northwest Passage, the latest of which is Race to the Polar Sea.

Race to the Polar Sea Wins Honourable Mention

2009-08-19T00:51:00.000-07:00

My book Race to the Polar Sea, which is now surfacing in paperback from HarperCollins Canada, has won Honourable Mention in the Keith Matthews Award competition sponsored by the Canadian Nautical Research Society. The annual award recognizes the best book on a maritime topic.
The judges described the work, which tells the story of Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane, as "engagingly written, impressively researched, and engrossing." The author's discovery of a long-lost journal, they wrote, as well as his "effective interweaving of documentary and published evidence, and his infectious enthusiasm for the subject, combine to resurrect Kane as an important figure in the history of Canada's north."
Sure, they went on a bit, but why not? "Parts biography, adventure tale, and romance, this work makes an important contribution to Arctic and environmental history."
The winning book was At the Far Reaches of Empire by Freeman Tovell, which celebrates a Spanish sea captain, Bodega y Quadra, who explored the Pacific Northwest prior to 1800. The Nautical Research Society doubles as the Canadian national sub-commission of the International Commission for Maritime History.

Just say yes to naked books!

2009-08-15T05:24:00.000-07:00

In the Globe and Mail Book Section, I rebut a rebuttal: can we stop obsessing, please, about what makes a Canadian author Canadian and focus our attention on individual books?

By Ken McGoogan

Last updated on Saturday, Aug. 15, 2009 04:09AM EDT

If we look at literature from a national perspective, as distinct from taking a generic, thematic or period approach, we have to clarify what belongs and why. Here in Canada, we have drifted into defining Canadian Literature according to authorial nationality. We say it is literature written by Canadians.

But then we face a question: How do we define Canadian? Looking at Ed O'Loughlin, long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, we discover that he was born in Toronto and lived in Canada for his first six years. And some of us end up claiming that a novel written by an Irishman, and set in Ireland and Africa, is Canadian.

Instead of falling repeatedly into this trap, I say we forget the author and his or her nationality. Instead, let's look at the naked book and ask: Does this work belong to Canadian literature? No biography, no authorial opinions. Is this book of special interest to Canadians? Is it set in Canada? Does it feature Canadian characters? Does it explore Canadian themes? Does it manifest a sensibility that is distinctly Canadian? Is it relevant in some unexpected way?

I am suggesting that we follow those countless scholars who have long since identified The History of Emily Montague as the first Canadian novel. Author Frances Brooke (1724-1789) was English. Yet she wrote a novel that belongs to this place – and so to Canadian literature. Why can't other foreign nationals do the same?

Certainly, I can make a case for Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale or Mavis Gallant's Stories From the Fifteenth District, which could only have been written by Canadians; and also for a memoir set partly in this country. Conversely, I see no way to claim Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano – not without going outside the book. Nor do I see anything Canadian about Brian Moore's Judith Hearne.

On the other hand, I can make a case for his The Luck of Ginger Coffey, set in Montreal – and likewise for Rawi Hage's Cockroach, Michael Ondaatje's In The Skin of a Lion and Dionne Brand's What We All Long For. In these last, all written by authors born outside Canada, we see on-page proof of “civic identification.”

Will posterity accept less? I doubt it. One hundred years from now, if people are still studying Canadian literature, those who prepare reading lists won't be contemplating an author's persona or promotional strategies. They will make choices based on the books in front of them.

Ken McGoogan is the author most recently of Race to the Polar Sea.

What? Almost autumn already?

2009-08-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

This autumn, according to Savvy Reader, Our Hero will spend sixteen days sailing in the Northwest Passage with Adventure Canada. Afterwards, he'll wax eloquent about that voyage in two different cities while showcasing his book Race to the Polar Sea.
On October 21, as part of The Eh List Author Series, Ken will speak at the Toronto Public Library, Northern District, starting at 6:30 p.m.
Then on November 17, he will be a featured author at Explore The North, an evening of conversation, food, art, music and artifacts slated for the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. That event kicks off with a cocktail reception at 6 p.m., and Ken will talk about Polar Sea and Fatal Passage, which was turned into a BBC docudrama. Joining him on stage will be Elizabeth Hay, who won the 2007 Giller Prize with Late Nights on Air, and Charlotte Gray, whose books include Sisters of the Wilderness and Reluctant Genius.
Between those events, on Saturday October 24 at 1 p.m., Ken will moderate a round table discussion at the International Festival of Authors. He is writing a book about the Scottish influence on Canada, and the subject of the panel is Writing Scotland’s Past.

CanLit lives! Analyze books, not authors. . .

2009-08-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

Our Hero turns up in Globe and Mail Books (Aug. 8/09) arguing that when we think about Canadian literature, we should analyze books, not authors. The electronic version at the other end of the link comes complete with a little known photo of Malcolm Lowry . . .

By Ken McGoogan

The literary mavens are at it again: demanding to know how we define “a Canadian author.” This time, the inspiration is the just-released long list for the Man Booker Prize – a list apparently devoid of Canadians.

Or no, wait: turns out Ed O’Loughlin, the Dublin-based, 42-year-old author of Not Untrue and Not Unkind, was born in Toronto. O’Loughlin spent his first six years in Edmonton, and his next thirty-six in other countries, mostly Ireland. No matter: one writer calls him Canada’s “torchbearer,” while a headline declares him “the only Canadian long-listed” for the prestigious Man Booker.

At that point, the literati begin to agonize – and not for the first time. What makes an author Canadian? Place of birth? Current residence? When does an immigrant author become a Canadian? What happens when a Canadian-born writer turns American? Confusion, angst, disgruntlement: this is what comes of investigating authors instead of books.

A couple of years ago, here in the Globe and Mail, I reviewed an historical novel that recreated the harrowing true story of the final expedition of Sir John Franklin. As most readers know, Franklin disappeared into the Arctic in 1845 with two ships and 128 men, leaving behind a welter of questions.

Because the Franklin tragedy stands at the heart of Canadian history, it has attracted the attention of authors as diverse as Pierre Berton, Margaret Atwood, John Geiger, Rudy Wiebe, Gwendolyn MacEwen, and Mordecai Richler.

The novel I reviewed, The Terror, transformed the Franklin saga into a supernatural, hell-bent narrative. I declared the book a tour de force and added: “The author's nationality notwithstanding, this novel is far more deserving of specifically Canadian attention than the majority of the books that, come autumn, we will see short-listed for this country's most prestigious literary prizes.”

This prediction was a no-brainer. Despite its manifest relevance to Canadian readers, The Terror was not even eligible for most of this country’s literary awards. Why not? Well, because it was written by Dan Simmons -- an American.

At that point, I began to wonder. When we talk about a work of Canadian literature, wouldn’t we be wiser to look at the book and not at the nationality of its author? Wouldn’t it be wiser to ask: Does a given work speak specifically to Canadians as distinct from Albanians, Bolivians, Belgians or Americans? If it does, then isn’t that enough to make it a Canadian work?

Take a novel written by a native Canadian and set in Canada. Obviously, it’s Canadian. But of course a work can be Canadian without being set here. If a novel is written by someone who came of age in this country, and so was psychologically shaped by this place, his or her creations can only be Canadian. Attitude and sensibility inform a literary work no matter what the setting, which is why Mavis Gallant will forever speak to Canadians.

English literature offers an illustration: Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein. That trilogy is set not in England but in Middle Earth – yet it remains as jolly-old-English as a pint of bitter. If anyone disputed this, I believe I could demonstrate the Englishness of that epic.

Giving priority to the work over the author is no revolutionary idea. When scholars hunt the first Canadian novel, they invariably turn up The History of Emily Montague. Set in eighteenth-century Quebec, it was written by Frances Brooke, an Englishwoman who spent a year in the colonial wilds. She wrote numerous other books that have nothing to do with Canada, and scholars rightly claim none of them for this country.

Consider Malcolm Lowry, also born and raised in England. He is best-known for Under the Volcano, a modernist masterpiece set in Mexico. He wrote much of it in British Columbia, but the book shows no evidence of that. And I don’t see that we can claim it for Canadian literature. Lowry’s October Ferry to Gabriola, however, is set in the Gulf Islands. Clearly it belongs to Canadian literature, as well as to British. It illustrates the point that a work can belong to two or more national literatures.

The same is true of certain works of Brian Moore. His novel Judith Hearne, set in his native Ireland, can not be considered Canadian. But his Luck of Ginger Coffey is set in Montreal, speaks directly to Canadians, and so belongs to the literature of this country, as well as to that of Ireland.

In 2010, Richard Ford, the celebrated American author, will publish “a novel of revenge and violent retribution set on the Saskatchewan prairie.” This work, entitled Canada, will rightly be recognized as an American novel. Because of its subject matter, however, it will speak specifically to Canadians. So, yes, it will also belong to Canadian literature. It will have dual nationality.

What about The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penny? That mystery is set in Canada in the 1860s. The author is a Scot who never visited this country – but clearly, that is irrelevant. Thanks to geography and history, the novel speaks specifically to Canadians. It belongs to Canadian literature. And the same is true of certain works by American Howard Norman and Scotland’s Margaret Elphinstone.

So much for books produced by foreign writers. Situating works by Canadian immigrant authors is equally entertaining. But here I would observe that if we accept to look at literature through the prism of nationality, rather than through genre, for example, then the words “Canadian literature” have to mean something.

To my mind, Canadian literature is variously bilingual, multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, post-colonial, post-modern, and even multi-national. By it is not post-national. At this final fork in our argument, then, we take the nationalist path identified by Rudyard Griffiths (Who We Are: A Citizen’s Manifesto) rather than the internationalist one highlighted by Pico Iyer, who has suggested that Canada has a post-national literature.

I would say no, it does not. Canadians contribute to international literature, certainly. But this country, Canada, has a Canadian literature. And immigrant authors -- among them Austin Clark, Michael Ondaatje, Dionne Brand, Neil Bissoondath, Nalo Hopkinson, and Rawi Hage – are producing some of its most exciting works.

Immigrant Canadian authors face extra choices. They can speak to Canadians, to readers of a native land, to a particular diaspora, or they can go international and address Americans and Belgians as directly as Canadians. This last is the Pico Iyer option, and both M.G. Vassanji and Rohinton Mistry have chosen it.

A Fine Balance, set in India, shows what can result. Critics have argued that Mistry could not have written this shining novel while living in India, and probably they are correct. But the novel reflects nothing of Canada, speaks equally to Canadians and Norwegians, and could have been written in England, Ireland, France, the United States, or you name it.

Whenever he chooses, Mistry can write a Canadian novel -- and probably a towering one. To call A Fine Balance a Canadian work, however, is like laying claim to Under The Volcano. It’s wishful thinking.

And that leaves only Ed O’Loughlin and his Man Booker contender, Not Untrue and Not Unkind. The product of a sensibility shaped elsewhere, the novel focuses on an Irish foreign correspondent who shuttles between Dublin and Africa. To see it claimed as Canadian is embarrassing.

Toronto author Ken McGoogan spent two decades as a book reviewer and literary columnist. He sails as a historian with Adventure Canada and writes Canadian narratives, the latest of which is Race to the Polar Sea.

Creative Non-fiction Workshop

2009-07-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

Back by popular demand: my Creative Non-fiction workshop at University of Toronto. What the heck is CNF, anyway? We hear the term applied to all kinds of writing. How does Creative Non-fiction differ from journalism? From academic writing? From short stories and novels? Is it okay to mix and match? Why does Our Hero prefer the term "Narrative Non-fiction?" I discovered CNF in the late 1990s when, while writing a book called Fatal Passage, I began bringing together everything I had learned from publishing three novels and thousands of journalistic articles. In answer to early questions: Yes, autobiography and memoir certainly belong to the genre, as does the research-based narrative.

My workshops are you-focused, you-driven. I lead discussions and some in-class "workouts." In responding to works-in-progress, I am craft-oriented (I have spent crazy amounts of time thinking about craft). This introductory session runs eight weeks, Tuesday nights from 6:30 to 9, starting October 6, 2009. Registration is open (http://learn.utoronto.ca/site3.aspx). Administrative questions, contact bill.zaget@utoronto.ca. Content queries, drop me an email.

The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson

2009-07-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

So here's a review that turned up in the Globe on July 11.

FATAL JOURNEY:The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson

By Peter C. Mancall (Basic Books, 288 pages, $31)

By Ken McGoogan

Four centuries ago next year, on April 17, 1610, Henry Hudson sailed out of London on a small wooden ship called Discovery. A veteran explorer with three northern voyages behind him, Hudson brought with him twenty-one men and two boys, one of whom was his son.

Backed by two dozen wealthy Londoners – merchants, politicians and gentlemen – Hudson was sailing to find a Northwest Passage, a direct water route through North America that would allow European ships to reach the East Indies.

Seventeen months later, in September 1611, the Discovery would arrive back carrying seven men and one boy. Hudson and his son would not be among those who returned. And the deck of the ship would be stained with blood.

The story of what happened on that voyage is a famous tragedy of northern exploration history. As I have noted before, the image of Henry Hudson set adrift in a small boat with seven men and a boy, victims of mutiny in a forbidding landscape, haunts anyone who contemplates it.

In Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson, historian Peter C. Mancall offers no startling revelations. But his sense of seventeenth-century England is so strong that this book is worth reading for context alone.

In 1610, at the end of the Elizabethan Age, he tells us, London was “a city awash with mercantile enthusiasm and maritime pride.” At any given time, 2,000 English ships might be at sea, many of them coming and going from the Spice Islands of the East Indies: “cinnamon, cloves, peppers, and other exotic flora had captured the imagination of the English,” Mancall observes, and “much money was to be made in satisfying the newly sophisticated national palate.”

The lust for spices had fuelled the search for the elusive Northwest Passage, inspiring voyages by Martin Frobisher, Humphrey Gilbert and John Davis, among others. Mancall sets the stage before he details Hudson’s career, although he also summarizes the whole story in his opening chapter.

This mistake drains his narrative of energy. But Mancall is a scholar, a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California, and not a professional writer. He follows academic conventions to the letter, confining himself strictly to exposition, and never, never, never breaking into a scene. As a result, he lets opportunities slip away.

At one tense moment during Hudson’s final voyage, for example, with the ship trapped amongst ice floes, Mancall quotes a witness as observing that “there were some who then spake words, which were remembered a great while after.” He quotes details from that account, with one sailor declaring that “if he had a hundred pounds he would give ninety for the chance to return to London.” The ship’s carpenter retorts “that if he had that much money, he wouldn’t even give up ten pounds – because he believed that the expedition would be a success.”

In the hands of a craftsman with a more literary imagination, this altercation could have become a vivid scene. Instead, we get long-distance observation and quotation from the documentary record.

And yet the saga emerges. The mutineers claimed that, as supplies ran out and men neared starvation, Hudson hoarded food and fed his favourites. Also, by demoting those with navigational skills and appointing an illiterate first mate, Hudson had taken sole control of the ship’s route. Having narrowly survived one horrendous winter locked in the ice of James Bay, he appeared bent on risking a second – and this some of the men could or would not tolerate.

Mancall stops far short of justifying the mutineers. He remains irreproachably even-handed, and offers comparisons to show that some of those who made it home were lucky to escape the death penalty.

One bit of confusion arises towards the end of the narrative. Mancall tells us that the mutinous Juet survived most of the voyage: “He died, apparently from starvation, before the ship managed to dock on Ireland’s west coast.” But later, without clarification, he quotes a ship’s captain identifying a location as the spot “where the villains Greene and Juet were slain, after they had exposed Master Hudson.” Fine, the captain had his facts wrong.

More questionable is Mancall’s dismissal of the oral history relating to a spot near the bottom of James Bay known locally as “Young Englishman.” He notes that, picking up the story after the abandoned sailors reach shore, “one legend purports that John Hudson trudged southward, where he found Samuel Champlain . . . but there is no evidence to support it.” Also, “a recent expedition to find a purported grave proved fruitless.”

But in his recent book God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery, author Douglas Hunter describes how Champlain learned that some Algonquins had enslaved an English youth, clearly Hudson’s son, and travelled overland to free him.

Apparently, the sailors had tried to steal food and got massacred – all but one, this enslaved youth. But Champlain met so much resistance as he neared the implicated tribe that he abandoned the search.

Oral tradition says the boy was murdered at the place called Young Englishman. If John Hudson was dead by the time Champlain came looking for him, the killers would have had good reason to resist his approach.

Mancall does a splendid job of situating Hudson’s last voyage in the context of British exploration. But those marking the 400th anniversary of the expedition might want to supplement their reading with God’s Mercies.

Ken McGoogan is the author of Fatal Passage, which inspired a BBC docudrama, and Race to the Polar Sea.

Ah, so! A reviewer of taste and intelligence

2009-06-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

The book is written by Peter Mancall. But the significant bit in the Winnipeg Free Press review turns up in the third sentence, when Ian Stewart writes: "From the point of view of this armchair voyager, Mancall ranks with the finest contemporary Canadian writers in Arctic and Western Canadian exploration history, Ken McGoogan, D’Arcy Jennish and Heather Robertson, as a first-class storyteller."

Lucky Seventeen

2009-06-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

Ottawa writer Rob McLennan keeps a terrific literary blog.
One of the highlights is 12-or-20-questions, in which
he enters into a dialogue with various writers. He stumped me
with three questions, but I managed to answer seventeen --
long a lucky number for me. The dialogue begins . . .

1 - How did your first book change your life?

My first book did not change my life. Neither did my second, third, or fourth. While writing and publishing those books, I continued working at my full-time job in journalism. And I kept the only schedule that ever worked for me, and which I had followed for years before I published my first book: get up at 5 a.m. (or earlier) and write until 8:30 or so, then have breakfast and head off to the newsroom.

For the rest, click on Lucky Seventeen . . .

Film based on Fatal Passage wins a Rockie

2009-06-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

Wonderful to see the movie version of Fatal Passage getting the attention it deserves.
The Grand Prize for best Canadian program at the Banff World Television Awards -- commonly called a "Rockie" -- has gone to the 90-minute docudrama, Passage, which is based on my book.
It tells the story of John Rae, the Orcadian explorer who solved the two great mysteries of 19th-century Arctic exploration, discovering both the fate of the lost Franklin expedition and the final link in the Northwest Passage.
The film was produced by PTV Productions for BBC Scotland, and directed by John Walker. Your faithful blogger not only wrote the book and served as a consultant, but makes an appearance in the London sections of the film, which were shot in the British Admiralty offices.
Published originally in 2001, Fatal Passage won four literary awards, among them the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, the Canadian Authors' Association History Prize, and an American Christopher Award.
The book continues to sell well in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

Shout out to Richard Flanagan!

2009-06-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

Sooner or later, you knew I would get around to reading "Wanting," an acclaimed novel set partly in Tasmania, and featuring my old familiar friends Jane Franklin, John Franklin, Charles Dickens and Mathinna, the aboriginal girl Jane adopted. It's a wonderful work but in case you think me biased . . . .
A Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote that in "Wanting," author Richard Flanagan has written an exquisite, profoundly moving, intricately structured meditation about the desire for human connection in its many forms." The Sun-Herald affirms that the novel moves "seamlessly through time, across two continents and between three story-lines," while remaining "a marvel of precision and cohesion." And the Sydney Morning Herald writer declared flatly: “This is the best novel I have read this year or expect to read for several more.”
Flanagan's novels have been published in more than two dozen countries, and from this one, you can see why.
OK, so the biggest treat for me came later at www.richardflanaganwanting.com.au, where in his background notes, the author writes: "Ken McGoogan's Fatal Passage (2001) and Lady Franklin's Revenge (2006) alerted me to the unusual story of Dr. John Rae and the complex achievement of Lady Jane Franklin."
It's a simple thing to do, acknowledge your sources, but you'd be amazed at how often creators prove unable to muster the requisite grace. So: hats off to Richard Flanagan. And check out this fine novel.

Bookish ex-farmer inspires unrepetant urbanite

2009-05-31T05:57:00.000-07:00

This reminiscence of mine turned up a while back on the Facts & Arguments page in the Globe and Mail. Surely it deserves a second life in cyberspace?

The time: July, 1975. The place: Nelson, British Columbia.

A young Canadian urbanite, desperate for a summer job, finds work as a "green-chain man" at a sawmill (now long gone) operated by Kootenay Forest Products.

Five days a week, wearing a hardhat and steel-toed boots, he spends eight hours hauling planks off the green chain, essentially a giant conveyer belt. Like his brawnier co-workers, the urbanite stacks these boards behind him according to length – ten feet long, twelve feet, sixteen – on flatbed cars that a more senior worker will roll away on rails.

Each night, the urbanite suffers a recurring nightmare. Just as he finishes loading a flatbed car to shoulder height, the whole pile starts to topple – which means he will have to restack the boards while keeping pace with those whizzing past on the green chain. At this point, he wakes up, hollering.

Against this backdrop, the urbanite meets the bookish ex-farmer. Their respective wives, working temporarily as tellers in the same bank, had got talking. Soon, both women had confessed the same dark, dirty secret: "My husband is an aspiring writer."

The urbanite took himself seriously in those days, as writers in their twenties do, and he wasn't especially keen to meet another scribbler. After all, what were the chances that this ex-farmer was serious? That he had the grit, savvy and stamina to survive in the literary jungle? Already the man was in his late thirties.

But the women persisted, and one evening, after soaking in a hot bath, the young urbanite met the ex-farmer. To his surprise, he got yakking about life and writing and favorite authors and didn't stop talking for three hours. This old guy was the real thing – and no pretension about him.

In the weeks that followed, the couples got together often, and always the two men yammered into the night. So when you were in Mexico, writing fiction in Oaxaca, I was on the fire lookout in the Rockies, typing away in my tower! In some ways, they had little in common. A dozen years older, originally from Minnesota, the ex-farmer had spent four years in the American Navy, between the Korean and the Vietnam Wars. Having immigrated to Canada as part of the "back to the land" movement, he and his wife were about to move to a cabin twenty miles north of Nelson.

The urbanite would soon return to Toronto, to resume journalism studies at Ryerson. But here, besides "serious writing," was something else the men had in common. After his stint in the navy, the ex-farmer had earned a degree in journalism. Since then, he had worked at The Chicago Tribune and The Detroit Free Press. He had sailed to Europe to write the Great American Novel, but got distracted during the voyage by the woman who had since become his wife.

Meanwhile, the ex-farmer had kept writing fiction. He had published half a dozen short stories in men's magazines, those publications never purchased for their photographs. Still, the young urbanite had to admit it: this old guy could write. And yet, and yet: soon he would turn forty. Surely he had missed his time?

When summer ended, the men vowed to remain in touch. And, incredibly, for the next thirty-two years, they did precisely that – first through letters, later by email. Occasionally, when the urbanite lived in Vancouver or Calgary, the couples would get together and yammer into the night.

During those decades, while earning his daily bread as a journalist, the young urbanite began publishing books. The ex-farmer responded with kudos and applause. He called the urbanite an inspiration. And, while holding down energy-draining jobs, raising a family, and commuting back and forth to his cabin in the woods outside Nelson, he kept writing. He wrote and wrote and wrote, and he submitted – but nobody wanted what he sent out.

The ex-farmer kept writing and submitting. Then, in 1990, with a narrative essay harking back to his boyhood on a farm, he won the creative nonfiction prize in the CBC Literary Competition. During the next five years, make that ten and then fifteen, the ex-farmer elaborated that essay, writing and polishing. Again and again, he would receive encouraging feedback, near-acceptances – but then, for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the work, he would receive a rejection.

So it went until last year, when sharp-eyed editors at Oolichan Books, a literary publisher on the West Coast, perceived that this ex-farmer's memoir was no journeyman effort, but haunting and elegant – a masterpiece of life-writing. They made a modest offer, the ex-farmer accepted, and this year, having reached the age of seventy-two, Ross Klatte published his first book, Leaving The Farm.

On reading the finished work, while sitting in the sunshine at the centre of the universe, the urbanite, no longer young, could only gaze west and raise a glass of dry red wine. He drank to the ex-farmer, Ross Klatte, who lives still in the woods outside Nelson, an inspiration not only to the urbanite, but to anyone who reads him.

Fatal Passage fuels Inuit refutation at British Museum

2009-05-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

First came my book Fatal Passage, which revealed the dastardly machinations of Jane Franklin and Charles Dickens. PTV Productions based a docudrama on the book (Passage) which aired on BBC Scotland and won acclaim at film festivals in Canada. Tagak Curley and I met during the London filming of key segments of the movie. And John Rae keeps on keeping on . . . .

Nunavut politician to address British museum on Inuit role in Franklin expedition
Last Updated: Friday, May 22, 2009
CBC News

Nunavut cabinet minister Tagak Curley is set to speak at a museum in England this weekend, hoping to refute what he says are false claims of Inuit as murderers of Sir John Franklin's crew in the Northwest Passage in the mid-1800s.

Curley, an Inuit history buff as well as Nunavut's health minister, has been invited by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich to speak at the opening Saturday of an exhibition on Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition through the fabled passage.

Inuit have long been cast in a negative light since Charles Dickens wrote The Lost Arctic Voyagers, which accused Inuit of being murderers and cannibals.

"We need to try and resolve this conflict," Curley told CBC News.

"Unless the roots are dealt with, we cannot establish the true reconciliation and healing for all that matter."

In 1845, Franklin and his crew aboard HMS Terror and HMS Erebus set sail from London to search for the Northwest Passage, but disappeared during the trip, sparking speculation about what happened.

Commissioned by Franklin's wife, Jane, Dickens's 1854 work refuted one published earlier by explorer John Rae, who wrote that Franklin's crew may have fallen ill to scurvy and resorted to cannibalism.

Curley said he's disturbed by how some people still believe the author's claims today.

"It put an image of Inuit as not worth trusting," he said.

"They were called treacherous and to that extent, more like not humans at all. So I got quite annoyed with that."

Curley said history needs to be set straight, adding that he wants a plaque erected with the truth written on it.

But until Franklin's ships are found, the long-disputed question of what really happened to Franklin and his crew may never go away, said Canadian author Ken McGoogan, who has written extensively on both Franklin and Rae.

"We're never going to put this to rest," McGoogan said with a laugh. "That's my simplest answer, because this is a mystery at the heart of our history."

Curley said he is defending Inuit who are no longer alive, who were falsely accused of murder.

Literary Review of Canada

2009-05-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

The April issue of The Literary Review of Canada carried a terrific review of Race to the Polar Sea. Editor Bronwyn Drainie encourages authors to respond to reviews, and I happily did so. The May issue of LRC, which is turning up now in better bookstores, carries letters from John Ralston Saul and Stephen Clarkson, as well as the following from yours truly.

Re: “Frozen Moments,” by Mark Lovewell (April 2009).

In his generous, insightful review of my book Race to the Polar Sea, Mark Lovewell poses questions that reflect a serious engagement with the work. He asks whether Elisha Kent Kane, the focus of this biographical narrative, “fully deserves the resuscitated reputation McGoogan gives him.” He notes that, in Lady Franklin’s Revenge, I “finessed” the challenge of re-contextualizing John Rae, the subject of Fatal Passage; and he suggests that, in Polar Sea, it “would have been well worth the effort” to reprise that approach, and to situate Kane in relation to Rae.

These related challenges spring from one misconception. Polar Sea is not the latest instalment in a “string of exploration biographies,” as Lovewell believes, but the fourth and final volume in an Arctic Discovery Quartet.

Now it can be told: while “meticulous research” is indeed integral to my methodology, my approach is not scholarly and analytical but literary. The work’s architecture I “borrowed” from Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, which I regard as brilliantly conceived (though so grotesquely overwritten that today I find it impenetrable).

The four-part structure of both quartets is akin to that of the conventional pop song: verse, verse, bridge, verse. Durrell’s three “verses” are first-person accounts, the last of which signals a significant shift. In the pop song, the bridge differs from the verses in melody, measure and rhyme scheme. Durrell’s bridging novel, the third in the quartet, finds an omniscient, third-person narrator re-contextualizing events from a distance. Dramatic difference is part of the point.

In my Arctic Discovery Quartet, the three “verses” – Fatal Passage, Ancient Mariner and Polar Sea -- are stand-alone narratives that treat individual explorers who developed exemplary relations with aboriginal peoples. And my final verse, Race to the Polar Sea, marks a significant shift: starting with Elisha Kent Kane, explorers turned from seeking the Northwest Passage to making for the North Pole. My bridging volume, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, treats Arctic exploration from a distance, and re-contextualizes it.

In a way, Lovewell is right. A comparison of John Rae and Elisha Kent Kane would be well worth the effort. And including Samuel Hearne would only enrich the result. But such an analysis is the province of the academic dissertation. To introduce it into the narrative of Polar Sea would be to sing the melody of the “bridge” to the lyric of the “verse” – painfully wrong.

Our hero surfaces in Up Here magazine

2009-04-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

You've got to love a shout line on the front of the magazine: "Author Ken McGoogan on Cook, Peary & the Polar Centennial." And the article takes a position. I'm sorry to report that it's not accessible online. Guess Up Here wants you to subscribe. Anyway, the piece beings like so:

One hundred years ago this month one of the worst injustices in Arctic exploration history began unfolding on the northwest coast of Greenland. On April 18, 1909 an American doctor and two Inuit hunters struggled to the top of an icy ridge and looked out over a familiar scattering of igloos. Below, less than a mile away, lay the settlement of Anoatok, which they had left 14 months previously. Exhausted from an unprecedented ordeal, the three rose to their feet and waved, then huddled together and waited while old friends hitched up dog teams and drove out to collect them.

On reaching the bedraggled trio, the rescuers could only gape in disbelief. Emaciated and filthy, with wild, unkempt hair falling to their shoulders, the three looked half-human. But then came recognition, and everybody talking at once, and one of the rescuers, a tall, blond white American, stepped forward from one of the sledges. “Doctor Frederick Cook?” He held out his hand: “Harry Whitney. We are honoured to greet you.”

The doctor and his friends, Etuk and Wela, “had been so long in the chill of impending death,” Cook wrote later, “that compared to Whitney and to the Eskimos about, we were but half-alive.”

Back at the village, speaking English for the first time in more than a year, a dazed Cook learned that Whitney was a sportsman hunting polar bear, and that he had arrived here on a ship with Cook’s old mentor, the explorer Robert E. Peary. While bathing and eating, the exhausted doctor asked about his steward, Rudolph Franke, whom he had left here guarding a shack filled with fox furs and narwhal horns worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Franke had taken sick, he was told. Peary had allowed him to sail home on his second ship on condition that he hand over the doctor’s goods – “like ransom,” Cook wrote later, “sought from an enemy.” Not only that, but Cook learned that Peary had declared him dead, and had installed two crewmen in his shack, where even now they were gorging on the stores he had stowed for his own return.

Despite this unsettling news, Cook remained unflappable. When Whitney remarked on his calm, the doctor told him: “If you keep this quiet for the present, I will tell you some great news. I have reached the Pole.”

Creative Non-Fiction rolls into the Beaches

2009-04-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

YO, THANKS HUGELY FOR YOUR INTEREST! BUT I AM URGENTLY ADVISED THAT BOTH WORKSHOPS MENTIONED BELOW ARE FULL TO OVERFLOWING. FOR THOSE INTERESTED, I WILL BE RUNNING AN EIGHT-WEEK WORKSHOP IN CREATIVE NON-FICTION THIS AUTUMN AT UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, CONTINUING EDUCATION.

Would-be writers are clamoring to learn more about creative non-fiction.
An initial workshop offering at the Beaches Library, slated for April 18, apparently filled up before the advertising went out. So The Writers' Trust of Canada, sponsors of the workshop, asked after a second date, and we settled on May 9.

The revised poster (slightly truncated) reads as follows:

“Discovering Creative Non-Fiction”
Saturday, April 18, 2009 1pm – 3pm
and Saturday, May 9, 2009, 1pm - 3pm
Toronto Public Library – Beaches Branch

What is Creative Non-fiction? How does it differ from academic writing? From short stories and novels? From journalism? After earning two degrees, working as a journalist for three Canadian dailies, and publishing three novels, author Ken McGoogan discovered Creative Non-Fiction and began winning awards.

Starting with Fatal Passage, a national bestseller that won four prizes, Ken has applied CNF techniques to four acclaimed books. He will take you behind the scenes of his own work with a slide-show presentation that ranges from London, England to Orkney, and from Tasmania to the High Arctic.

Does the non-fiction novel exist? What is immersion reporting? Should we try to distinguish between literary journalism, narrative non-fiction and polemical non-fiction? Ken will explore these questions while leading a dynamic workshop that gets people writing and sharing on the spot.

KEN MCGOOGAN, whose books include Lady Franklin's Revenge and Race to the Polar Sea, teaches Creative Non-Fiction at University of Toronto. A recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for History, Ken is vice-chairman of the Public Lending Right Commission. He lives in the Beaches.

REGISTRATION IS FREE BUT SPACE IS LIMITED

MAKE THAT GONE, SORRY!

Britain to debate Arctic explorer's image makeover

2009-03-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

You gotta love a national news service when a superb story turns up in newspapers across the country -- like this one, say, by Randy Boswell of Canwest, which surfaced in the Montreal Gazette and The Vancouver Sun and probably a few other places.

By Randy Boswell
Canwest News Service

A Canadian writer's decade-long campaign to restore the reputation of an unsung Arctic explorer has finally reached the British House of Commons, inspiring a Scottish MP's bid to rewrite the history engraved on the hallowed walls of Westminster Abbey.

Fatal Passage, an award-winning 2001 book by Toronto author Ken McGoogan, argued that scholars and British officialdom had largely overlooked the 19th-century achievements of John Rae, a Scottish-born Hudson's Bay Company employee who, in 1854, discovered the grim fate of the lost Franklin Expedition.

Rae's search also led to him finding the last link in the fabled Northwest Passage — the very sea route through Canada's Arctic islands, which Sir John Franklin had been seeking when he perished with his 129-man crew in the late 1840s.

But Rae also created a storm of outrage in Britain by reporting that members of Franklin's crew cannibalized the dead in a desperate — though ultimately ill-fated — attempt to survive their ordeal. Rae's suggestion, McGoogan has argued, led to his virtual erasure from the pages of history, as posthumous glory was heaped on Franklin, and other explorers were given credit for Rae's achievements.

Now, Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael is urging the U.K. Parliament to officially recognize Rae as the true discoverer of the passage. And he wants the country to correct the claims in two high-profile, "inaccurate" historical markers paying tribute to the Englishman Franklin: one inside the abbey and the other near the headquarters of the British Admiralty.

[To read the whole article, click on the title.]

Celebrating a Buried Treasure

2009-02-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

If you missed it in the Globe . . .

Buried Treasures / An Arctic adventurer worth remembering
Elisha Kent Kane was a superstar adventurer and writer in the 19th century but is remembered today only by specialists and aficionados

KEN MCGOOGAN
Globe and Mail
February 28, 2009

Back in New York City after spending two years in the High Arctic, explorer Elisha Kent Kane went with friends to dine at the legendary Century Club. After dinner, while the men sat drinking sherry and smoking cigars, someone introduced Dr. Kane to British author William Makepeace Thackeray, already famous for Vanity Fair.

Prompted by others, Kane – who had published one book about northern exploration – began recounting the story of his latest expedition. According to Harper's Monthly Magazine, Thackeray and the other men “listened like schoolboys might listen to Sinbad the sailor.” When Kane was done, the hefty Thackeray rose from his chair, approached the table and asked a mutual acquaintance, “Do you think the Doctor will permit me to stoop down and kiss his boots?”

The 35-year-old Kane, born a storyteller in 1820, had divided his life between adventuring and writing. Before undertaking this latest expedition, he had descended into a volcano in the Philippines, fought pirates on the River Nile, infiltrated slave traders in West Africa and narrowly survived a stab wound in the Sierra Madre while fighting in the Mexican-American war. . . .

To read the rest, simply click on the title of this entry . . .

Ken McGoogan on the Ice

2009-02-22T13:16:00.000-08:00

During my 2008 Arctic voyage with Adventure Canada, we visited Beechey Island, site of the first three graves of the lost Franklin expedition of 1845. Elisha Kent Kane, the subject of my book Race to the Polar Sea, was one of the first to discover those three graves. I was trying to locate the precise spot where Kane was standing when a sailor came tumbling over a snow-covered ridge hollering, "Graves! We've found graves!" But as we were making our way towards it, suddenly a polar bear started moving rapidly around a bay in our direction. A polar bear can outrun a race horse, so we beat it back to the zodiacs.

Click this title to see the Globe on Steinbeck

2009-02-21T02:17:00.000-08:00

"An unfortunately timeless classic . . .
When a politician tried to ban a book in Alberta, Ken McGoogan wrote a protest song. It's a tune that still needs singing today"

That was the headline at the Globe and Mail Books website, where editor Peter Scowen posted and introduced Say Goodbye to John Steinbeck. He filled in a few blanks as follows . . . .

"What we have here is a YouTube video featuring Ken McGoogan, bestselling author of Race to the Polar Sea, back in his singer-songwriter days in Calgary.

McGoogan wrote this song in the 1990s "after a government MLA stood up in the legislature and brandished a petition calling for the banning of Of Mice and Men, the classic novel by John Steinbeck. I still remember reading about this in a newspaper for the first time, and the way the blood rushed to my head. I was writing and performing songs in those days, and the result was Say Goodbye to John Steinbeck."

McGoogan says others felt the same way and together they managed to stop the politician from banning the book.

McGoogan pulled the video from his archives in time for Freedom to Read week (Feb. 22-28). "Would-be censors, it turns out, are like the living dead in SF movies: you stop some of them, but others just keep coming in waves," he says. "The only good thing about them is that they keep this song timely and relevant."

As for the band, it performed in the mid to late 90s in and around Calgary, and was called Ken McGoogan and the Immoral Minority. Says McGoogan: "On keyboards, you see Frank 'Freeman' Huether, who had played mostly jazz around town; and on drums, 'The Monster' Fred Engel, who had worked professionally as a session man here in Toronto. I was writing a lot of songs in those days, and we did all original tunes. Say Goodbye to John Steinbeck was one of our 'greatest hits.'"

Say Goodbye to John Steinbeck

2009-02-17T18:29:00.000-08:00

On Feb. 27, during Freedom to Read Week, I'll be part of Closer to the Land: Freedom of Expression and the Environment, an extravaganza slated for the Toronto Reference Library. I won't bring my guitar that night, but to mark the occasion, I've ransacked the musical archive and voila: Say Goodbye to John Steinbeck. I wrote this song when I was living in Calgary, after a government MLA stood up in the legislature and brandished a petition calling for the banning of Of Mice and Men, the classic novel by John Steinbeck. I still remember reading about this in a newspaper for the first time, and the way the blood rushed to my head. I was writing and performing songs in those days, and the result was Say Goodbye to John Steinbeck. Turned out lots of people felt the same way I did, and we killed that particular campaign. Would-be censors, it turns out, are like the living dead in SF movies: you stop some of them, but others just keep coming in waves. The only good thing about them is that they keep this song timely and relevant.

Polar Sea video draws on latest voyage

2009-02-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

So here it is, my first YouTube video. It's called Polar Sea, which is short for Race to the Polar Sea, and it draws on my latest Arctic voyage with Adventure Canada. We sailed north towards the Pole in the wake of Elisha Kent Kane, but didn't get as far as he did. We didn't encounter anything like the ice that almost killed him, either. Didn't get to attach our ship to a massive iceberg for towing. Like Kane, however, we did enjoy meeting some fun-loving Inuit. If you've got three minutes and forty seconds, check it out!

Slouching towards a cyber-presence. . .

2009-02-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

I have been remiss. I have neglected to post links.
And links, I am told, are the very stuff of a cyber-presence.

So here's me at a Polar Bear Swim. . .

Here's me rambling around Scotland. . .
which adventure contributed to a book (How the Scots Invented Canada).

And here's me SIMULTANEOUSLY in the Boston Globe and the High Arctic.
If you poke around, you might turn up a video called Frozen In Time. I'm wearing what Sheena calls my Junior Glasses, after Junior Soprano, but they've since been retired.

Yo, Peter C. Newman . . .

2009-02-07T07:40:00.001-08:00

Yo, Peter, the cheque is in the mail. But seriously, thanks for the hit in today's Globe and Mail. And for those who missed it, voila:

"For a change of pace and mood, I've been devouring Ken McGoogan's magnificent Race to the Polar Sea, published last year and arguably the most evocative of his four volumes on vintage Arctic exploration. One of Sir John Franklin's would-be rescuers, Elisha Kent Kane, sought an open sea at the top of the world and found instead upraised tables of ice 14 feet thick. The most literate of the northern adventurers, Kane left an impressive legacy that McGoogan, who sailed the same waters - now ice-free - explains, expands and makes relevant. This is a memorable book about an unforgettable odyssey."

John Geiger makes three . . .

2009-02-04T06:06:00.000-08:00

This revised line-up just in: On Feb. 17 at Commensal Restaurant, Ken will "read" along with Andrew Pyper and -- wait for it -- John Geiger. John has just published The Third Man Factor: The Secret to Survival in Extreme Environments, which has been drawing raves and has been picked up in 10 countries. Possibly because, on the back jacket, Ken calls it "a prodigious synthesis -- elegant, entertaining, and important." C'mon, it's POSSIBLE, surely?

Ken Turns Up at the Centre of the Universe

2009-01-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

Three events loom in downtown Toronto.
They're billed as readings, but let's face it, I do more talking than reading.
And wouldn't have it any other way.

JANUARY 28:
The KAMA Reading Series, signature event for World Literacy of Canada, finds me "performing" with Joseph Boyden, Mary Lou Finlay and Dan Hill. The event happens at McKinsey & Company on Charles Street West, and launches a spectacular five-evening reading series that has, alas, already sold out (http://www.worldlit.ca/kama).

FEBRUARY 17:
Commensal Restaurant hosts a popular literary series (it merely threatens to sell out) at 665 Bay Street. Starting around 7 pm, I'll do a turn with Andrew Pyper (The Killing Circle) and Sally Armstrong (Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots). The trick is to come for dinner and stay for the festivities, which include door prizes. Advance tickets are at Commensal Vegetarian Restaurant and Ryerson University Bookstore. Also 905-271-9917. (http://torontoreadingseries.com/commensal-reading-series.html)

FEBRUARY 27:
The Toronto Reference Library celebrates Freedom to Read Week with an extravaganza called Closer to the Land: Freedom of Expression and the Environment. At this event, which I'm warned is going to television, I'll take the stage with Trevor Herriot (Grass, Sky, Song, Promise and Peril), Taras Grescoe (Bottom Feeder), musician Sarah Harmer (I'm a Mountain) and host Matt Galloway of CBC Radio One. Advance tickets are at Book City and all proceeds got to PEN Canada.

Robbie Burns at Port Credit

2009-01-24T20:07:00.000-08:00

Polar Bear Swim for Robbie Burns

2009-01-16T19:51:00.000-08:00

On January 24, Adventure Canada will hold a Polar Bear Swim in Port Credit,
Ontario, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robbie Burns (Jan. 25, 1759). From 1 p.m. onwards, Ken will be there, along with Doug Gibson, Graeme Gibson and Margaret Atwood, dispensing drams to those in need. The anticipation alone has inspired him to poetry . . .

Robbie Burns at Port Credit

Robbie Burns was brave and bold.
He did not shrink from getting cold.

To mark his birthday, Robbie said it,
He’d take a plunge in Old Port Credit.

When mortals, trembling, said, “Let’s scram!”
Our Rabbie called for one more dram.

Then in he dove, the people swear,
And swam off like a polar bear.

No icy swim, though sages dread it,
Could keep Our Rab from Old Port Credit.

My letter to Michael Ignatieff

2009-01-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

Eh, voila: me writing to Michael Ignatieff.

Hi, Michael.

Suggestions for the economy:

How about some infrastructure spending that will put money into the hands of Canadians who will spend it, while paying dividends across the country, and especially in Quebec?

I recommend increasing support to artists.

1. Change income tax provisions to exempt royalty income (to a fixed limit of, say, $20,000). This puts money in the hands of those who don’t have a lot of it, which means it gets spent right away. Model the exemption on the Quebec example – a strategy that makes Quebecers feel good, because once again they are showing the ROC how things should be done.

2. Increase the overall budget of the Canada Council. Again, put more money in the hands of those who need it and so immediately spend it. This also clearly differentiates the Liberals from the Harperites.

3. Within the monies flowing through Heritage to the Council, target a specific amount to increase the Public Lending Right program (www.plr.ca), which has been losing ground steadily since Marcel Masse made it a reality almost 25 years ago. Again, here you get a high-profile return, both economically and politically, for a relatively small expenditure. Full disclosure: I am currently serving as vice-chairman of the PLR Commission. Also true: I am doing so because I believe the PLR is important.

Sincere best wishes,

Ken McGoogan

(www.kenmcgoogan.com)

Creative Non-Fiction at University of Toronto

2009-01-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

In other news, I'm leading an advanced
workshop in Creative Non-Fiction at U of T
starting in February. This means dealing mainly
with YOUR work-in-progress, though I do tend to have
an awful lot to say about craft. Details are at
www.learn.utoronto.ca . . .

Chasing Kane to the High Arctic

2009-01-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

So, two clips have turned up in Cyberspace
as a result of our most recent Arctic voyage with Adventure Canada.
The first is more tell than show, and vice versa, but hey,
together they contribute to the requisite fifteen minutes of fame . . .

one is at http://globeandmail.com/books,

the other at http://savvyreader.typepad.com . . .

Photos from Hart House . . .

2008-11-26T06:52:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile, Deborah Windsor
of the Writers' Union of Canada posted
some great shots from a reading I did at Hart House
at the University of Toronto.
http://kenmcgooganreads.shutterfly.com/

Here comes Ottawa . . .

2008-11-25T16:39:00.000-08:00

First weekend in December finds me in Ottawa
for a meeting of the Public Lending Right Commission.

Just to keep things interesting,
I'll do a reading/ presentation from Race to the Polar Sea.
That will happen at Collected Works Bookstore,
1242 Wellington Street, starting at 7:30 p.m.
(613-722-1265)

Be there or be square!